Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Michele Hanson: Leaving the house isn't worth the effort (guardian.co.uk)
I forget one thing, go back to fetch it and before I know it, I've forgotten something else.
Tanya Gold: Why I hate fashion (guardian.co.uk)
High heels are painful, designer clothes don't make you beautiful and even the most successful models are thoroughly miserable.
Lenore Skenazy: How To Cheer Up College Kids (creators.com)
A new study - there's always a new study, isn't there? - finds that college students today are more depressed than the ones during the Depression. Talk about ironic.
TOM DUNKEL: Vigor Quest (nytimes.com)
Comite's relationship to Bellizzi is like that of an ace mechanic to a classic car. Her job is to keep him finely tuned despite worn parts. "I consider what I do aggressive prevention, the basis of which is metabolism modulation," Comite says. "Twenty years from now, this will be the standard of care."
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF: "Our Basic Human Pleasures: Food, Sex and Giving" (nytimes.com)
Want to be happier in 2010? Then try this simple experiment, inspired by recent scholarship in psychology and neurology. Which person would you rather be: ...
How restaurants entice us into choosing expensive meals (guardian.co.uk)
Menus are not simply a list of dishes. As William Poundstone explains, they are a cunning marketing ploy.
David Teather: Starbucks legend delivers recovery by thinking smaller (guardian.co.uk)
Howard Schultz, who turned the coffee chain into a global giant, has restored its fortunes by halting aggressive expansion and redesigning stores for local communities.
Germaine Greer: Why the world doesn't need an Annie Warhol or a Francine Bacon (guardian.co.uk)
The Pompidou has spent a lot on art by women, but their new exhibition doesn't add up.
Hanna Hanra: Art's great squatting revolution (timesonline.co.uk)
Forget crusties with roll-ups, squatting is now mainstream. Meet the new faces setting up galleries in a space near you.
Meet the painter Anthony Hopkins (guardian.co.uk)
Actor, director, screenwriter, composer - and now painter. Anthony Hopkins has been busy, writes Simon Hattenstone.
The prayers of Peter Brook (guardian.co.uk)
Will theatre's great experimenter ever stop? As he nears 85, Peter Brook tells Fiachra Gibbons why his new play, about a brutal religious war, was 50 years in the making.
John Horn: Duncan Sheik springs back with ghostly semi-musical 'Whisper House' (Los Angeles Times)
Duncan Sheik is a skeptic of the supernatural - "I completely don't believe in ghosts," the singer-songwriter says. Yet if his new musical "Whisper House" is to succeed in its world premiere Thursday at the Old Globe Theatre, audiences - not to mention some of the musical's characters - will need to have faith in things that go bump in the night.
The Weekly Poll
New Question
The 'LOL in the Boardroom' Edition
President Barack Obama told banks Thursday they should pay a new tax to recoup the cost of bailing out foundering firms at the height of the financial crisis. He said...
"My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed. And my determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people...We want our money back, and we're going to get it."
Citing 'obscene' bonuses, Obama to tax banks - U.S. business- msnbc.com
How confident are you that Obama will be able to recover those funds?
1.) Very - 'The Man' will be on 'em like a pit bull...
2.) Somewhat - We'll get back just enough so 'The Man' can claim success, but not nearly the total of what they scammed from us...
3.) Yer kiddin' me, right? I'm laughing with 'The Board'...
Send your response to
wrote:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Link from RJ
The Secret Cities of Yemen
Hi there
I have been quiet of late, I know - work sometimes gets in the way of my online writing endeavors! Here is my latest - possibly an interesting story for you?
Reader Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
Complete List Of Winners
SAG Awards
Winners of the 16th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards presented Saturday night:
Movies:
Cast: "Inglourious Basterds."
Actor in a leading role: Jeff Bridges, "Crazy Heart."
Actress in a leading role: Sandra Bullock, "The Blind Side."
Supporting actor: Christoph Waltz, "Inglorious Basterds"
Supporting actress: Mo'Nique, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire"
Stunt ensemble: "Star Trek."
Television:
Drama series cast: "Mad Men."
Actor in a drama series: Michael C. Hall, "Dexter."
Actress in a drama series: Julianna Margulies, "The Good Wife."
Comedy series cast: "Glee."
Actor in a comedy series: Alec Baldwin, "30 Rock."
Actress in a comedy series: Tina Fey, "30 Rock."
Actor in a movie or miniseries: Kevin Bacon, "Taking Chance."
Actress in a movie or miniseries: Drew Barrymore, "Grey Gardens."
Stunt ensemble: "24."
Life Achievement: Betty White.
SAG Awards
Telethon Raises $57 Million, So Far
Haiti
Organizers for the all-star "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon say the event raised a record-setting $57 million - and counting.
The two-hour telethon aired Friday night on the major networks and dozens of other channels, including MTV, Bravo, and PBS, and was also streamed live online. Stars like Brad Pitt, Beyonce, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and more used their presence to encourage donations for Haiti, following a Jan. 12 earthquake that killed an estimated 200,000 people.
A statement released Saturday said the money raised was a record. It does not include donations by corporations or via iTunes, where people are able to buy performances of the event for 99 cents.
Haiti
Massachusetts Benefit
Arlo Guthrie
Folk singer Arlo Guthrie has headlined a sold-out concert that raised more than $10,000 for the victims of series of arson fires in western Massachusetts.
Saturday night's show at the Academy of Music also featured two local bands and other guests, and singer-songwriter Martin Sexton made a surprise appearance.
Michael Kusek, an organizer of the Northampton Neighbors Relief Fund, says the fund had already raised more than $40,000 for those who lost property in a string of 15 fires set in the early morning hours of Dec. 27.
One fire killed World War II veteran Paul Yeskie Sr. and his son, Paul Yeskie Jr.
Arlo Guthrie
Turns 75 Today
Canned Beer
Be sure to crack open a cold one on Jan. 24, the day canned beer celebrates its 75th birthday.
New Jersey's Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company churned out the world's first beer can in 1935, stocking select shelves in Richmond, Va., as a market test. The experiment took off and American drinkers haven't looked back since, nowadays choosing cans over bottles for the majority of the 22 gallons of beer they each drink per year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Canned brewskies may have only hit shelves in 1935, but the drink's history goes back much further - at least 6,000 years, in fact, to ancient Iraq.
Ironically, it was the Prohibition that ultimately shaped the American population's taste for beer. The stronger beer that was the norm before Prohibition gave way to much weaker varieties afterwards, as people had become accustomed to bootlegged brews, which were always watered down for maximum profit.
Canned Beer
Film At Sundance
'8: The Mormon Proposition'
The Utah-based Mormon church plays a starring role in a new Sundance Film Festival documentary about the 2008 ballot initiative that successfully banned gay marriage in California.
Miami-area filmmaker Reed Cowan's "8: The Mormon Proposition," premieres Sunday at the Park City festival.
The film contends that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built on decades of anti-gay teachings to justify its political activism and tried to hide its role as the driving force behind the coalition of conservatives that helped pass Proposition 8. The proposition reversed an earlier court ruling legalizing gay marriage.
The film debuts just as a California federal trial over the constitutionality of the ban enters its third week.
'8: The Mormon Proposition'
Arrested In West Virginia
Andy Dick
Actor and comedian Andy Dick has been charged with two felony counts of sexual abuse in West Virginia.
Dick was arraigned Saturday afternoon in Cabell County Magistrate Court. Court documents say Dick is accused of grabbing a bouncer's crotch earlier in the morning at the Rum Runners bar in Huntington. Magistrate Patty Verbage Spence set bail at $60,000.
Spence set a Feb. 2 preliminary hearing date for the 44-year-old Dick, who was in Huntington to perform at the Funny Bone Comedy Club. Funny Bone managing partner Tom Schaefer posted Dick's bail, and said Dick is "absolutely still on the schedule for Saturday and Sunday."
Andy Dick
Estate Sues Producer
Farrah Fawcett
Farrah Fawcett's estate sued a producer Friday who collaborated with the actress, claiming he botched a documentary project and misused her company's money.
The lawsuit claims Craig J. Nevius exploited Fawcett and improperly revealed privileged information about the actress to the media, including that her cancer had returned. The suit also claims Nevius turned in an unworkable first cut of a documentary on Fawcett's fight with cancer and he may have embezzled money from the actress' company, Sweetened By Risk.
The lawsuit states NBC, which aired the television special "Farrah's Story," had to rework the footage with help from Fawcett's longtime companion, Ryan O'Neal. The edits were being made until shortly before the special aired, the lawsuit states.
Nevius sued O'Neal and Fawcett's friend Alana Stewart over "Farrah's Story" last year. The case is still pending.
Farrah Fawcett
TV Police Plan
'Office for Arab Satellite Television'
A proposal to create a pan-Arab television monitor is a "disturbing" move that could could lead to censorship of broadcasts critical of Arab governments, a media watchdog said on Saturday.
The Saudi-Egyptian proposal to establish a regional office to supervise satellite broadcasters is aimed directly at Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, the Palestinian Hamas group's Al-Aqsa TV and Hezbollah's Al-Manar channel, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said.
The proposal to create the "Office for Arab Satellite Television" is to be discussed when information ministers from Arab League countries meet in Cairo on January 24.
Reporters Without Borders said the proposal stems in part from a recent move by the US Congress to allow satellite owners to be branded "terrorist entities" if they allow broadcasts by television channels also branded as such.
'Office for Arab Satellite Television'
Estate Opposes Joe's Allowance
Michael Jackson
Attorneys for Michael Jackson's estate said they should not have to pay the late pop star's father, Joe, a reported $15,000 monthly allowance.
In papers filed on Thursday, attorneys for the estate argued Joe Jackson was never dependent on his son when alive, and that the estate should not have to pay his expenses now because he was excluded from the "Thriller" singer's will.
The papers state that Joe Jackson sought the allowance for air travel, hotel, assistants and legal fees, and to support his children and grandchildren.
Joe Jackson, 81, said in November that his expenses exceed $20,000 a month but that his income from U.S. Social Security is a mere $1,700.
Michael Jackson
Problem Toads
Aussies
When the enemy reached Australia's largest state last year, the Kimberley Toad Busters knew the battle was on. But they didn't expect that officialdom might strip them of their most effective weapon.
The enemy? The cane toad. The weapon? Plastic bags full of carbon dioxide - long considered the animal-friendly alternative to whacking the creatures with golf clubs or cricket bats.
But Western Australia's Department of Environment and Conservation isn't so sure that euthanizing Bufo marinus with carbon dioxide is the kindest way to go, and says further tests are needed.
Should the tests prove the toads are suffering, the carbon dioxide option could be banned across Western Australia. And that, the Toad Busters fear, would make the war against cane toads virtually unwinnable.
Keep on whacking them instead, says the government. But to many, that makes no sense.
Aussies
Could Run 40 MPH - In Theory
Humans
Humans could perhaps run as fast 40 mph, a new study suggests. Such a feat would leave in the dust the world's fastest runner, Usain Bolt, who has clocked nearly 28 mph in the 100-meter sprint.
The new findings come after researchers took a new look at the factors that limit human speed. Their conclusions? The top speed humans could reach may come down to how quickly muscles in the body can move.
Previous studies have suggested the main hindrance to speed is that our limbs can only take a certain amount of force when they strike the ground. This may not be the whole story, however.
Their results showed the critical biological limit is imposed by time - specifically, the very brief periods of time available to apply force to the ground while sprinting. In elite sprinters, foot-ground contact times are less than one-tenth of a second, and peak ground forces occur within less than one-twentieth of that second for the first instant of foot-ground contact.
Humans
Beach Souvenirs
Storms
The sky was blue and the sun bright for the first time in days after a week of powerful Southern California rain storms, but all Victoria Macey could see was the mountain of steaming trash and twisted debris on her favorite beach.
"I'm completely shocked. From our house, all we could see was gorgeous clouds and then we come down here and there's so much trash, it's really sad," Macey said as she photographed a sopping plastic baby doll propped atop an overturned end table. "I can't believe how many shopping carts there are. That's what blows my mind."
Similar scenes played out on beaches in Long Beach, Newport Beach and San Diego where the Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Tijuana rivers empty into the sea. Many surfers said they would avoid the water because of concerns about bacteria from storm run-off.
Meanwhile, the Surfrider Foundation canceled its beach cleanups through the end of the month near the Tijuana River because the hazardous waste created too much of a liability.
"Even if they do have gloves and masks, it's too dangerous," Dan Murphy, of Surfrider, said of the beach volunteers. "Whatever the trash is on the beach, it's been flowing in the sewage and it's covered with the stuff."
Storms
In Memory
Frances Buss Buch
Frances Buss Buch, a pioneer of network TV and the first female TV director, has died. She was 92.
While taking acting classes, performing off-Broadway and modeling in New York City, Buch joined CBS for a temporary job as a receptionist in July 1941 and was soon asked to be in front of the camera for various then-black-and-white programs, the family said.
Buch joined CBS Television - the fledgling video arm of the Columbia Broadcasting System - just two weeks after the Federal Communications Commission allowed commercial TV broadcasts.
She appeared on TV's first game show, "The CBS Television Quiz," as a scorekeeper.
When networks had to suspend live broadcasting in 1942, Buch got a job directing and producing U.S. Navy training films in Florida, where she met her husband, Bill Buch. The two married in 1949, the family said.
She rejoined CBS in 1944, and by 1945, CBS promoted her to be TV's first female director.
Buch was soon directing and producing a variety of telecasts, from Brooklyn Dodgers games to musicals to crime dramas, according to The Paley Center for Media, which inducted her into the "She Made It" class of 2007.
The group credits her for helping establish programming templates and much of "television's unique visual language."
Buch directed the first color TV program, "Premiere," in 1951 after CBS won government approval for its color system.
She also directed the first television talk show "Mike and Buff," starring Mike Wallace and his then-wife, Buff Cobb, from 1951 to 1953.
She resigned in 1954, to be a full-time homemaker, the family said.
"I was a little tired of it," she said in 2008. "I had an entirely different life. But I had no regrets."
Buch is survived by her sister, Mary Buss Keating, of Hilton Head Island, S.C., nieces, a grandniece, Spencer, and a brother-in-law.
There will be no funeral service. The family is planning a memorial gathering.
Frances Buss Buch
YouTube - Frances Buss Buch Archive Interview
In Memory
Jean Simmons
Jean Simmons, whose ethereal screen presence and starring roles with Hollywood's top actors made her a mid-century film icon, has died at age 80.
The actress, who sang with Marlon Brando in "Guys and Dolls;" costarred with Gregory Peck, Paul Newman and Kirk Douglas; and played Ophelia to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, died Friday at her home in Santa Monica, her agent Judy Page told the Los Angeles Times. She had lung cancer.
Already a stunning beauty at 14, Simmons made her movie debut in the 1944 British production "Give Us the Moon."
Several minor films followed before British director David Lean gave the London-born actress her breakthrough role of Estella, companion to the reclusive Miss Havisham in 1946's "Great Expectations." That was followed by the exotic "Black Narcissus," and then Olivier's Oscar-winning "Hamlet" in 1948, for which Simmons was nominated as best supporting actress.
She won an Emmy Award for her role in the 1980s miniseries "The Thorn Birds."
Her other notable films included "Elmer Gantry" (with Burt Lancaster), "Until They Sail" (with Newman), "The Big Country," (Peck), "Spartacus," (Douglas), "This Earth Is Mine" (Rock Hudson), "All the Way Home" (Robert Preston), "Mister Buddwing" (James Garner) and "Rough Night in Jericho" (Dean Martin).
Simmons had left Britain for Hollywood in 1950, accompanied by her future husband Stewart Granger. There, they were befriended by reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes, who flew them to Tucson, Ariz., for a surprise wedding.
"When I returned from the honeymoon," Simmons told a reporter in 1964, "I learned that Hughes owned me - he had bought me from (British producer) J. Arthur Rank like a piece of meat."
What followed was a string of films that she would later dismiss as terrible, although she took some solace in the fact Hughes, legendary in those days as a womanizer, never bothered her.
Simmons finally ended up suing Hughes for the right to make more prestigious films at other studios, and the result was "Young Bess" (as young Queen Elizabeth I), "The Robe" (the first movie filmed in CinemaScope), "The Actress," "The Egyptian" and "Desiree."
By the 1970s, her career as a lead film actress had ended, but Simmons continued to work regularly on stage and in television.
In the 1980s and '90s she appeared on such television shows as "Murder, She Wrote," "In the Heat of the Night" and "Xena: Warrior Princess." She also appeared in numerous TV movies and miniseries, including a 1991 version of "Great Expectations," in which she played Miss Havisham this time.
The careers of both Simmons and her husband Granger had flourished in the 1950s, he as a swashbuckler, she as the demure heroine. But long absences on film locations strained their relationship, and they divorced in 1960. They had a daughter, Tracy.
Shortly after her divorce, Simmons married Richard Brooks, who had directed her in "Elmer Gantry" and would again in "The Happy Ending." Their marriage, which produced a daughter, Kate. The couple separated in 1977 and later divorced.
Jean Simmons
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