Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Connie Schultz: "After Trump Video: 'This Has Become So Personal for Me'" (Creators Syndicate)
"You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them," Trump said. "It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything - grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."
Susan Estrich: "Bad Doctors [Including Psychiatrists]" (Creators Syndicate)
Don't let your sister stay at your house, she told me. Why not? Since I finally started doing the exact opposite of what Dr. X said, my sister and I have finally developed the sort of adult relationship that could have provided comfort to both of us years ago. Don't go to your mother's 80th birthday party, she insisted. It will be a setback for you. A setback from what? As it turned out, it was my mother's last birthday. All my uncles came. I will never forgive myself for not going, and I will never understand where this woman who had never met my mother got the nerve to direct me not to go.
Mark Shields: What's That Scent in the Air? (Creators Syndicate)
Now is crunchtime, when nerves are raw and when the real possibility of defeat reveals a presidential candidate's character. Keep your eyes open and pay attention.
Lenore Skenazy: About Those Clowns… (Creators Syndicate)
Let's face it; clowns are creepy. In a way, this current craziness has finally brought that fact out into the open, the way the word "frenemy" finally gave us a way to talk about something we all recognized but hadn't acknowledged. (As did "bad hair day" before that.)
Froma Harrop: Clinton's Wall Street Speeches Were Actually Brilliant (Creators Syndicate)
Now we have the three transcripts. Everyone can read them, and everyone should. What they show is Clinton's extraordinary understanding of our world - its leaders and their politics, terrorist groups and their vulnerabilities, the interplay of global forces, and the economic well-being of Americans.
Sam Jordison: "Books to give you hope: Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett" (The Guardian)
The giddy invention in this novel is a spirit-lifter in itself, but its vision of all too familiar folly comes with a heartening reminder that we can learn from our errors.
Clive James: 'I am continually reminded of what a misery guts I have been' (The Guardian)
When I was young, I rarely demonstrated any subtlety at all.
Jonathan Jones: Goodbye art history A-level, you served the elite well (The Guardian)
History of art only really flourished in private schools. If it's to be revived, it needs to draw on the days of great communicators such as Kenneth Clark.
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
said:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Lumpy
Little spoiled bully Lumpy is going to sue the women who've had the nerve to talk about his reprehensible behavior? Forget the f'ing Krakan! Loose Joe Biden! I will PAY to see him beat the snot out of Lumpy behind the school house!
How many lawsuits is the Cheeto Asshole now threatening? Does he have enough money to pay all the lawyers? Oh right, he'll just stiff them.
And all that stuff he's threatening to do his first 100 days in a presidency he'll NEVER have? He obviously doesn't know the Constitution as most of it can't be done by the president!
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Temp
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
"A BIG HEADACHE NOW."
WHO IS KILLING THE BIG BAD WOLF?
"SAVE THE WEIRDOS!"
"PUT DOWN THAT PHONE."
SAY WHAT?
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Lots of military air traffic thanks to an airshow down in Huntington Beach.
T-rump Planted a Story About Her
Salma Hayek
The 50-year-old actress opened up about Donald Trump (R-Pinche Güerito) during a Spanish-language interview on El Show del Mandril on Radio Centro 93.9 in Los Angeles on Friday.
The Frida star began her interview by arguing that if Trump won the presidential election, it would be really bad for the Hispanic community. She also revealed that Trump once courted her, despite knowing that she was in a relationship at the time.
"When I met that man, I had a boyfriend, and he tried to become his friend to get my home telephone number," she shared of meeting the 70-year-old business man early in her career. "He got my number and he would call me to invite me out."
"When I told him I wouldn't go out with him even if I didn't have a boyfriend, [which he took as disrespectful], he called -- well, he wouldn't say he called, but someone told the National Enquirer," Hayek continued.
"Someone told the National Enquirer -- I'm not going to say who, because you know that whatever he wants to come out comes out in the National Enquirer. It said that he wouldn't go out with me because I was too short," she recalled.
Salma Hayek
Nobel Academy Member Slams
Bob Dylan
A prominent member of the academy which awards the Nobel literature prize slammed this year's laureate Bob Dylan as arrogant on Friday, citing his total silence since the award was announced last week.
The US singer-songwriter has not responded to repeated phone calls from the Swedish Academy, nor reacted in any way in public to the news.
"It's impolite and arrogant," said the academy member, Swedish writer Per Wastberg, in comments aired on SVT public television.
The Swedish Academy still does not know if Dylan plans to come.
"This is an unprecedented situation," said Wastberg.
Bob Dylan
Videogame Strike Picket
SAG-AFTRA
In a sign that no negotiations will take place soon, SAG-AFTRA will hold its first strike picket Monday morning in Playa del Rey in Los Angeles at videogame producer Electronic Arts.
Union president Gabrielle Carteris is leading the action. SAG-AFTRA went on strike on Friday against videogame companies, barring members from working as voice actors for Electronic Arts and 10 other companies - Activision Publishing, Blindlight, Corps of Discovery Films, Disney Character Voices, Formosa Interactive, Insomniac Games, Interactive Associates, Take-Two Interactive Software, VoiceWorks Prods., and WB Games.
It did not disclose plans for other strike actions at an afternoon news conference at its Los Angeles headquarters, with leaders spelling out details of the failure of the two sides to reach an agreement after 19 months of talks. SAG-AFTRA disclosed at the event that between 5,000 and 6,000 "affected" members - those working on the contract - had approved a strike authorization last year by more than 96%.
"These companies are immensely profitable, and successful games - which are the only games this dispute is about - drive that profit," the union said this week after negotiations collapsed.
"We have proposed a fair payment structure that enables the sustainability of a professional performer community," SAG-AFTRA added. "These employers have unreasonably refused that. The time has come to end the freeloader model of compensation and that is why our members are united behind this cause."
SAG-AFTRA
Really Do Ignore You
Rich People
Wealthy people appear to spend less time looking at other human beings, compared with how much time people in lower social classes look at others, according to a new study that used Google Glass headsets to track people's gazes.
The findings suggest that your social class influences how much other people grab your attention, the researchers said.
More research is needed to know why the wealthy may look less often at other people, the researchers noted. But one possible explanation may be that, for people in higher social classes, other human beings hold less "motivational relevance" - a psychology term that means how worthy of one's attention something or someone is, based on how much reward or threat might be linked with that object or person, the researchers said.
Because the time people spend looking at something may be related to how much motivational relevance the object or person holds, the "findings make a compelling case that social classes differ in their judgments of other people's significance," the researchers wrote in their paper, published Oct. 3 in the journal Psychological Science.
Rich People
Nat Guard Must Repay Enlistment Bonuses
California
Nearly 10,000 California National Guard soldiers have been ordered to repay huge enlistment bonuses a decade after signing up to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, a newspaper reported Saturday.
The Pentagon demanded the money back after audits revealed overpayments by the California Guard under pressure to fill ranks and hit enlistment goals. If soldiers refuse, they could face interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens, the Los Angeles Times said.
Faced with a shortage of troops at the height of the two wars, California Guard officials offered bonuses of $15,000 or more for soldiers to reenlist.
A federal investigation in 2010 found thousands of bonuses and student loan payments were improperly doled out to California Guard soldiers. About 9,700 current and retired soldiers received notices to repay some or all of their bonuses with more than $22 million recovered so far.
"These bonuses were used to keep people in," said Christopher Van Meter, a 42-year-old former Army captain and Iraq veteran who was awarded a Purple Heart. "People like me just got screwed."
California
Redefined Privacy Policy
Google
In 2007, Google bought online advertising network Doubleclick with the assurance that they would prioritize user privacy as they developed new ad products. They've kept that promise, dividing their massive database of web browsing data from the personal info collected from Gmail and other parts of its product suite. Until last summer. That's when the search giant quietly asked account owners to opt-in to sharing more data, an oblique request for permission to bundle user browser activity with personally-identifying information to better cater ads. In essence, signing up lets Google's ads know who you are no matter where you go across different devices.
That means DoubleClick ads following users from site to site can further cater to them based on whatever information they entered in Gmail. Google can build a complete profile, tying names and email details to browsing habits and search attempts, providing ads that are minutely suited.
New Google accounts are automatically opted in to this level of data sharing, while existing users were asked if they'd opt-in to "receive new features for your Google account." Thus far, that's just led to more closely-tailored ads and the ability to view activity tied to your account across multiple devices -- in other words, getting a much more detailed user history.
Google insists that they had adjusted their ad policy to adapt to the smartphone era. In a statement provided to ProPublica, a spokesperson said that opting in lets Google deliver much more precisely-catered ads to users based on their activity across all their devices. Which seems harmless enough: Opt-in if that sounds like your fancy.
Google
'A Fact Of Life'
T-rump Jr.
This week, amid warnings of voter fraud and refusal to agree to accept the outcome of the election unless he is the winner, Donald Trump (R-Grifter) seemed to have finally shifted national attention away from the leaked 2005 recording of his lewd remarks about women and the accusations of sexual assault and misconduct that have followed in its wake.
That was, until his son weighed in.
In an interview with Seattle-based conservative talk radio host Dori Monson Friday, Donald Trump Jr. (R-Pendejoito) said that conversations like the one in which his father has described his penchant for groping and kissing women without their consent are "a fact of life."
"Obviously, he's not happy about that," Trump Jr. said of his father's language on the tape, which sparked a small stream of revoked endorsements from prominent Republicans followed by a wave of sexual assault and misconduct allegations after it was released to the public earlier this month.
"We all know guys that have had conversations with other guys that go a little bit in that direction," he continued. "That's a fact of life."
T-rump Jr.
Vaccine Makers Failing
Polio
Two companies making vaccines to help the world eradicate polio are failing to produce enough, so many countries should prepare to give lower doses to make stocks last, a group of experts has advised the World Health Organization.
With polio on the brink of eradication globally, the WHO wants to see a worldwide switch from the traditional "live" oral polio vaccine, which runs the risk of spreading the disease, to an inactivated vaccine that needs to be injected.
But WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), which meets twice a year, said a severe shortage of inactivated vaccine means many countries should use a fractional dose, via an intra-dermal rather than intra-muscular injection, allowing each dose to go twice as far.
"There are only two manufacturers of the vaccine and they are having some problems with production of the vaccine, and getting enough raw material of the polio virus," SAGE Chairman Jon Abramson told reporters on a conference call on Friday.
The two manufacturers are French drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur and Asia's largest vaccine maker, Serum Institute of India Ltd, owned by the billionaire Cyrus Poonawalla.
Polio
In Crosshairs
Whalers
More than 80 nations square off in Slovenia next week over the fate of the world's remaining whales, facing a multitude of perils from meat hunters and ship strikes to getting snared in fishing gear.
The stage is set for heated debate, as the 88 members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) are deeply divided along pro- and anti-hunting lines.
The biggest bones of contention are Japan's yearly whale hunt in the name of science, which critics insist is for dinner tables instead, and a proposal for a South Atlantic sanctuary to protect the majestic marine mammals.
Hunting nations Japan, Norway and Iceland are traditionally pitted against much of the rest of the world at the biennial IWC meetings, which seek to balance issues of national sovereignty, subsistence rights and culture with conservation of Earth's natural bounty.
This year's meeting marks the 70th anniversary of the commission's founding, and the 30th birthday of a whaling moratorium estimated to have prevented the killing of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of whales.
Whalers
In Memory
Junko Tabei
Junko Tabei, the first woman to climb Mount Everest, has died, Japanese media reported. She was 77.
Tabei died Thursday of cancer at a hospital outside of Tokyo, according to the reports.
Tabei reached the summit of the world's highest mountain in 1975. In 1992, she also became the first woman to complete the ''Seven Summits,'' reaching the highest peaks of the seven continents.
She gained world fame after Everest, but played it down, telling Sports Illustrated in a 1996 profile: ''I was the 36th person to climb Everest.''
Tabei scaled peaks in more than 60 countries, Japan's Kyodo News agency said.
Japanese public broadcaster NHK said she continued climbing even after being diagnosed with cancer four years ago.
Junko Tabei
In Memory
Steve Dillon
Steve Dillon, the British co-creator of the comic-book that inspired the AMC drama "Preacher," ha died.
Dillon was 54 and died in New York City, according to a tweet posted Saturday by his brother, Glyn Dillon. No further details were immediately available.
Dillon was a prolific comic-book artist who got his start as a teenager working for Marvel's U.K.-based operation on "Hulk" and "Fury" comics. He co-created the "Preacher" series with Garth Ennis in 1995 for Vertigo. The comic series ended in October 2000 after 66 issues.
The comic was adapted by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg for a drama series that premiered earlier this year on AMC and has been renewed for a second season. Dillon was a co-exec producer with Ennis on the series.
In addition to "Preacher," Dillon was known for his work on such titles as "2000AD," "Hellblazer," and "Punisher."
In the 1980s, Dillon got his start in Britain drawing for magazines including Warrior and Doctor Who Magazine, according to ComicBook.com. He also launched comic magazine Deadline with Brett Ewins in 1988, which continued for another seven years.
Steve Dillon
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