Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman's Blog: What's in a Name (New York Times)
A lot, or at least that's what Republicans think. Greg Sargent reports that they're demanding that a TV station stop running ads saying that the GOP wants to end Medicare; the claim is that this is a lie, because the new program the GOP wants to impose in place of Medicare is still Medicare. As Greg says, this is important - because if they can get away with this, it will amount to a serious infringement of free speech, preventing people from running truthful ads.
Paul Krugman's Blog: Ryancare Versus Obamacare (New York Times)
Some commenters have asked a good question, albeit in a belligerent tone: how does the Ryan plan differ from the Affordable Care Act? After all, in both plans people are supposed to buy coverage from private insurers, with a subsidy from the government. Well, the answer is that the ACA is specifically designed to ensure that insurance is affordable, whereas Ryancare just hands out vouchers and washes its hands.
Paul Krugman's Blog: Yes, Medicare Is Sustainable In Its Current Form (New York Times)
I keep seeing people say that Medicare in its current form is not sustainable, as if that were an established fact. It's anything but. … So this business about Medicare in its present form being unsustainable sounds wise but is actually a stupid slogan. The solution to the future of Medicare is Medicare - smarter, less open-ended, but recognizably the same program.
Mark Shields: Presidential Trendsetters (Creators Syndicate)
Politics may well be the most imitative of all human activities. To this day, there are state legislative candidates campaigning in Massachusetts and pronouncing the word "again" so that it rhymes with "plane." Why? Because that's the way John Kennedy pronounced it, and he never lost an election.
Jim Hightower: OFFSHORE CORPORATE HAVENS COME ONSHORE
From Enron to Wall Street, a big cause of America's major financial collapses in the past decade has been simple deceit. Finaglers used secret offshore accounts and dummy subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere to avoid regulatory scrutiny and to make investors think the businesses were sounder than they really were.
The Simple Dollar
Welcome to The Simple Dollar! If this is your first time visiting the site, read my story and my key simple ideas for improving your finances and your life. Also, don't miss the basics of personal finance in five simple illustrations.
Less Antman: SimplyRich
Welcome. I'm Less Antman, head of SimplyRich. I'll be using this blog to post my thoughts on various personal finance issues. We won't just be talking about investments, but of goal setting, risk management, estate planning, spending & saving, debt management, and tax planning.
Marion Nestle: "Goodbye Food Pyramid: USDA Launches New Food Icon to Guide our Eating Habits"
As USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack explained, we have an obesity crisis in America that imperils our nation's national security, economic vitality, and health care system. It's time for action.
Dr. Dean Ornish: "Cholesterol: The Good, the Bad and the Truth" (Huffington Post)
… rather than being concerned about how to raise your HDL, eat a whole foods, plant-based diet--and spend a few minutes a day exercising, meditating, and loving more. Heart disease is completely preventable--today--in at least 95 percent of people simply by changing our diet and lifestyle. We don't need a new drug or breakthrough technology; we simply need to put into practice what we already know.
Cynthia R. Green: "Steve Martin: Poster Child for the Brain Health Generation" (Huffington Post)
In many ways, Mr. Martin embodies the kind of creative intellectual engagement we all need to take part in to keep our brains vital.
Roger Ebert's Journal: E. E. Cummings was Not a Racist
"Was E. E. Cummings a Racist?" That was the provocative HuffPost-style headline May 27 on Brow Beat, a culture blog on Slate.com. The author, Nina Shen Rastogi, reported that a lost poem by e. e. cummings had been discovered. The poem, named "(tonite," was published in the Awl, whose editor, Choire Sicha, tweeted that it was "reeeeaaaal troublesome!!!"
Jeff Bridges: 'He's a real chameleon' (Guardian)
From stoner icon to alien to all-American hero, Jeff Bridges immerses himself in every role. Ryan Gilbey talks to his friends, co-stars and directors.
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."
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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
Mostly sunny, but still on the cool side.
Raising Money
Vincent D'Onofrio
Vincent D'Onofrio is visiting Utah to drum up financial support for his real-life heroes: public safety workers who have been exposed to toxins from methamphetamine labs while on duty.
The "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" star's visit coincides with Saturday's "Ride for a Hero." The motorcycle ride originating in American Fork benefits police officers, firefighters and military personnel who have been sickened by exposure to toxic chemicals.
The fundraising event sponsored by the Utah Meth Cops Project is designed to help victims undergo a $5,200-per-person detoxification program.
D'Onofrio portrays a police investigator on the USA Network show. He says 92 people have undergone the program in Utah since it began in 2007 and the recovery rate is 100 percent.
Vincent D'Onofrio
Gets NY Honorary Degree
Tony Kushner
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner has been awarded an honorary degree from the City University of New York, which initially decided to withhold it after a trustee accused him of being anti-Israel.
Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld blasted Kushner as "a Jewish anti-Semite." CUNY later backtracked under a barrage of criticism.
Kushner accepted the degree at Friday's John Jay College commencement ceremony. He told students that there's injustice everywhere in a world where slavery masquerades as freedom and they must respond to the world's cries for help.
Kushner has said that while he's been critical of Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza, he unconditionally supports Israel's right to exist.
Tony Kushner
90 Years Later...
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary
It was a monumental project with modest beginnings: a small group of scholars and some index cards. The plan was to explore a long-dead language that would reveal an ancient world of chariots and concubines, royal decrees and diaries - and omens that came from the heavens and sheep livers.
The year: 1921. The place: The University of Chicago. The project: Assembling an Assyrian dictionary based on words recorded on clay or stone tablets unearthed from ruins in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, written in a language that hadn't been uttered for more than 2,000 years. The scholars knew the project would take a long time. No one quite expected how very long.
Decades passed. The team grew. Scholars arrived from Vienna, Paris, Copenhagen, Jerusalem, Berlin, Helsinki, Baghdad and London, joining others from the U.S. and Canada. One generation gave way to the next, one century faded into the next. Some signed on early in their careers; they were still toiling away at retirement. The work was slow, sometimes frustrating and decidedly low-tech: Typewriters. Mimeograph machines. And index cards. Eventually, nearly 2 million of them.
And now, 90 years later, a finale. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is now officially complete - 21 volumes of Akkadian, a Semitic language (with several dialects, including Assyrian) that endured for 2,500 years. The project is more encyclopedia than glossary, offering a window into the ancient society of Mesopotamia, now modern-day Iraq, through every conceivable form of writing: love letters, recipes, tax records, medical prescriptions, astronomical observations, religious texts, contracts, epics, poems and more.
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary
Plane Departs For Museum
"Miracle on the Hudson"
The U.S. Airways airplane that made a splash-landing dubbed the "Miracle on the Hudson" more than two years ago began a road trip on Saturday to Charlotte, North Carolina, its original, and final, destination.
The Airbus A320 airplane, which had sat in a New Jersey warehouse since it was salvaged from the icy Hudson River after the January 2009 water landing, was loaded onto a trailer earlier this week.
All 155 passengers and crew survived the incident that made pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger an American hero for his quick-thinking decision to land in the river when the airplane struck a flock of birds just after take-off from New York's LaGuardia airport and lost power in both engines.
The plane will make its way over several days to Charlotte, where it will beceom a permanent exhibit at the Carolinas Aviation Museum.
"Miracle on the Hudson"
Performance Rights Groups Face Challenges
PRO
After decades of occupying one of the most stable corners of the music business, performance rights organizations (PRO) are starting to face uncertainty and competitive challenges.
EMI Music Publishing announced in May that it plans to issue bundled mechanical and performances licenses directly to online services for its EMI April Music catalog, assuming responsibility for functions previously handled by ASCAP. It's a move that other leading music publishers are expected to make.
Greater interest in direct digital licensing among publishers, efforts to establish Pan-European licensing and the creation of a global repertoire database are reshaping the landscape being navigated by ASCAP and its fellow U.S. performing rights organizations BMI and SESAC.
ASCAP CEO John LoFrumento says that decisions by clients to take charge of some digital licensing won't threaten the PRO's business. He points out that EMI's move only affects online music users who aren't currently licensed or do not have licenses in effect with ASCAP and excludes broadcast or broadcast digital rights, cable, satellite and all other offline media. Moreover, he notes that the online dollars represented by EMI's decision could amount to less than one percent of ASCAP's total annual revenue.
PRO
Faces Las Vegas Charges
Douglas Brian Irvin
A bit actor who played a Las Vegas police officer on the TV series "CSI" faces charges of reprising that role to coerce a woman into sex in a Sin City hotel room.
Douglas Brian Irvin Jr., who also played a hotel guest in the 2009 film "The Hangover," responded to an ad for a $180 sensual body rub and asked a masseuse to come to his room at the Hooters Casino Hotel on May 15, police said.
The woman said Irvin began to touch her sexually against her will and offered her $10,000 for sex. She told detectives she agreed, but she wanted the money up front.
Irvin then is accused of pulling out a laminated identification card that said "police" and telling her that she would be arrested unless she had sex with him for free. He told her that he was a vice detective and that "she was in lot of trouble," according to an arrest report.
The woman said his demeanor was "very cop-like" and she believed he was a real detective, so she agreed to have sex to avoid being arrested, the report added.
Douglas Brian Irvin
Imitation Goes Wrong
Lady Gaga
A New Jersey school employee was in trouble on Thursday after telling students they were being treated to an online chat with Lady Gaga but substituted an impersonator instead, authorities said.
The elementary school employee in Tenafly, across the Hudson River from New York, had promised students that the celebrity would give an anti-bullying talk via the Internet last month, officials said.
"Knowing how disappointed the children would be, without authorization the staff developer made arrangements for an impersonator to take Lady Gaga's place -- a clear lapse in judgment," said Lynn Trager, superintendent of Tenafly public schools, in a letter to parents,
Trying to keep up the illusion, the fake Lady Gaga told the students her webcam was broken and she could only interact via a text-based chat program.
Lady Gaga
Everything Must Go
The Sahara
Now that the Sahara hotel-casino is closed in Las Vegas after 59 years, everything must go.
The owners of the Rat Pack-era casino are planning a liquidation sale of all items inside the property exactly one month after closing the casino's doors.
Things for sale include the casino's poker room sign, bedroom furnishings and chandeliers in several shapes and sizes.
The sale set to begin June 16 is being organized by Ohio-based National Content Liquidators, a firm that ran previous liquidation sales for other casinos.
The Sahara
A Hit Overseas
"The Tourist"
Remember "The Tourist," starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp?
The movie -- which bombed in North America -- has turned out to be quite the world traveler, grossing a mighty $210.7 million overseas.
By contrast, moviegoers in the United States and Canada bought just $67.6 million worth of tickets after the critically reviled saga opened in December. The worldwide total now stands at an impressive $278.3 million.
When "The Tourist" opened poorly in North America, there was plenty of chatter about whether its producers, Graham King and Tim Headington, would take a financial hit, considering the movie's budget was close to $100 million.
"The Tourist"
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