Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Megan Carpentier: How the Steubenville case exposes the cruelty faced by rape survivors (Guardian)
"We're not here to get justice for you," the prosecutor in my sexual assault case told me in our first meeting. "We're here to get justice for society." The fact is that, if the way sexual assaults are investigated and prosecuted - as in Steubenville, Ohio - represents the justice that society wants for victims and survivors of sexual assault, there's little question why 54% of sexual assaults in America go unreported to the police.
Andrew Bomford: The Greek island of old age (BBC)
It could be the fresh air and the friendly, easy-going, open-door lifestyle. It could be fresh vegetables and goat's milk. It could be the mountainous terrain. Everywhere on Ikaria is up, or down, so getting around keeps you fit. It could even be the natural radiation in the granite rocks. But Stamatis Moraitis thinks he knows what it is. "It's the wine," he says, over a mid-morning glass at his kitchen table.
Annalee Newitz: How to Rebuild a Broken Ecosystem - Yes, You Can Do It, Too! (io9)
He's the first otter to settle in San Francisco for over 40 years - which means that decades of water cleanup in the Bay Area are finally paying off. Even when ecosystems are severely polluted and damaged, they can be rebuilt. Here's how scientists and environmental enthusiasts are helping to make broken environments whole again.
Peter Hannam: Temperatures off the charts as Australia turns deep purple (Sydney Morning Herald)
The Bureau of Meteorology's interactive weather forecasting chart has added new colours - deep purple and pink - to extend its previous temperature range that had been capped at 50 degrees.
Rob Bricken: Can we bring the Greek Gods back, please? (io9)
… thanks to their diversity, the Greek gods would snap right into place. Hermes is obviously the god of cellphones, emails and text messages. As a craftsman, Hephaestus would probably handle all computers and network issues, while Demeter would watch over restaurants. Apollo, the god of YouTube videos. You can't tell me that life wouldn't be at least a little bit easier if we had a god specifically handling YouTube videos.
Hadley Freeman: How to parent girls: my guide to health and happiness (Guardian)
There is no guaranteed method for raising a happy child because - surprise - not all children react in the same ways. But some general guidelines can help your daughter's transition to womanhood.
Susan K. Lewis: Hate Mail From Third Graders (NOVA)
"It's not easy being a public enemy," writes Neil deGrasse Tyson in his book The Pluto Files. When Neil's Hayden Planetarium grouped Pluto not among the planets but rather with icy comets in the Kuiper Belt, he heard from thousands of outraged Pluto defenders. Here, peruse letters schoolkids sent Neil and see how their tone shifted as the public came to accept Pluto's fall from planethood.
KATE McILWAIN: Mum donates surgery money to neighbor (Illawarra Mercury in Australia)
Keen to pass on the goodwill extended to her in the past, Ms Hall has decided to give the money that has already been donated to her 11-year-old neighbour, Connor, who needs an urgent operation to remove a brain tumour.
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Last Night
Sunny and seasonal.
'Twilight' Finale Leads List
Razzies
The "Twilight" finale had better reviews than the franchise's previous four movies, but you'd never know it from the Razzie nominations singling out Hollywood's worst of the year.
"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2" led the Razzies lineup late Tuesday with 11 nominations, including worst picture, lead-acting slots for Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and supporting-acting nominations for Taylor Lautner and Ashley Greene.
Other worst-picture nominees are the naval action tale "Battleship," the family flick "The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure," Adam Sandler's raunchy dud "That's My Boy" and Eddie Murphy's comedy flop "A Thousand Words."
A spoof of the Academy Awards, the Razzies announcement came a little more than a day before Thursday's Oscar nominations. Winners for the 33rd annual Razzies will be announced Feb. 23, the night before the Oscar show.
Razzies
Beat Letterman
Jimmy Kimmel
ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" has gotten a warm welcome on its first night airing 30 minutes earlier.
Kimmel went head-to-head Tuesday for the first time against CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" and NBC's "Tonight Show with Jay Leno." According to Nielsen fast national ratings, Kimmel edged out Letterman and ran slightly behind Leno in total viewers.
Tuesday's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" was seen by roughly 3 million viewers, only 177,000 fewer than the audience for the "Tonight Show." It beat "Late Show" by 115,000 viewers.
"Jimmy Kimmel Live" scored its second-largest audience ever while exceeding the average audience in its previous berth by 59 percent.
Jimmy Kimmel
Joins Shatner In Priceline Campaign
Kaley Cuoco
William Shatner is getting a new Priceline commercial co-star: Kaley Cuoco of CBS' "The Big Bang Theory."
In an upcoming campaign for the online travel services company, Shatner's Negotiator reveals he has a daughter, played by Cuoco. She's been schooled since childhood in the art of - what else? - deal-making, and now is ready to join dad in pitching Priceline.
Cuoco, 27, said the 81-year-old Shatner has made Priceline "cool," but the company wanted to update its message for younger consumers.
The actors taped a pair of spots for the ad campaign that begins Jan. 14, with plans for two more commercials to be shot this summer, Cuoco said. The first spot is available on YouTube starting Wednesday.
Kaley Cuoco
Delta Apologizes
Dave Schneider
Delta has formally apologized to Dave Schneider, the musician whose vintage guitar was shredded by the airline's baggage handlers at a Detroit airport last month, and offered to pay him for his prized ax.
Schneider, guitarist and singer for Hanukkah-themed rock band The LeeVees and the hockey-themed Zambonis, had asked Delta staffers not to check in his 1965 Gibson ES-335-which he estimates is worth about $10,000-on a flight from Buffalo, N.Y., to Detroit, Mich. He asked if he could carry it on the plane instead, but he was denied.
Schneider said he was then given the "runaround" by Delta. The airline reluctantly offered to cut him a check for $1,000 in Tampa, Fla., his eventual destination. Schneider refused the check, because he didn't know how much the repairs would cost. The online claim forms he filled out after the guitar carnage were blank when Schneider later checked on them, and two emails he sent to Delta chief executive Richard Anderson were not returned.
On Friday, after Yahoo News first ran the story on Schneider's ordeal, a Delta representative contacted him and this week agreed to pay for the guitar. Delta also gave him a pair of free vouchers for future flights.
Meanwhile, Gibson contacted Schneider, too, offering repairs on the damaged 1965 ES-335 as well as a brand-new 50th anniversary reissue of a 1963 Gibson ES-335, free of charge.
Dave Schneider
New Comic
'Star Wars'
There's excitement brewing for fans of the original "Star Wars" trilogy.
Writer Brian Wood and Dark Horse Comics began a new monthly series Wednesday that focuses on Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo and Chewbacca, along with R2D2 and C3P0, as they seek to establish a foothold for the rebellion in the aftermath of the Death Star's destruction.
Wood, whose previous comics include the acclaimed "DMZ" and "Northlanders" at Vertigo and the ongoing "The Massive" at Dark Horse, called the new series about the classic "Star Wars" characters the only such series he could write.
Woods called the new series - illustrated by Carlos D'Anda - a way to examine the events that transpired between the end of the first film, "Star Wars: A New Hope" and the second film, "The Empire Strikes Back," by detailing the next, furtive steps for the rebellion and the Empire's efforts to stop it from spreading.
'Star Wars'
Rehab News
Larry Miller
Larry Miller, who has appeared in more than 100 movies, including "Pretty Woman" and "The Princess Diaries," has recovered from a life-threatening brain injury he sustained last April.
Miller, 58, fell and hit the back of his head when he tripped on concrete outside the Toluca Lake, Calif., studio where he records his podcast.
His spokesman, Michael Hansen, told ABCNews.com that Miller had gone into a coma for two weeks and was placed in intensive care at UCLA Medical Center. Miller was then kept in a medically induced coma for a month, Hansen said.
"It has been a slow recovery process regarding his brain connectivity, which he had to work on," Hansen said. "It takes time to heal with these types of injuries, but he is doing extremely well."
Hansen said Miller was expected to make a full recovery and would return to work on his podcast series "This Week With Larry Miller" Wednesday.
Larry Miller
TheBlaze
Relaunch
Glenn Beck (R-Delusional) plans to relaunch his media company TheBlaze as a libertarian news network, opening three foreign bureaus and relocating to bigger offices in New York City, he said on Tuesday.
The former Fox News host-turned-media entrepreneur announced the shift in his company's focus on his online television program. He said TheBlaze's refined political stance can fill the vacuum left by cable news networks' "far right far left" polarity, according to a broadcast of the show on TheBlaze's paywalled subscription site.
"We're not going to play in that crazy space as a network," he said, standing between a split screen playing clips of MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Fox News's Sean Hannity. "I consider myself a libertarian."
Over the next two months, TheBlaze will open bureaus in three foreign cities that are "important to America," though Beck did not identify their locations.
Relaunch
Another Publicity Stunt
T-rump
Donald T-rump has placed himself in the middle of another controversy involving a birth certificate-this time his own.
In a letter obtained by Yahoo News, the real estate mogul and de facto leader of last year's "birther" movement against President Barack Obama sent a copy of his New York City birth certificate to comedian Bill Maher, who earlier this week made a Trump-like demand
On Monday's "Tonight Show With Jay Leno," Maher said he would donate $5 million to the charity of Trump's choice (Maher suggested Hair Club for Men, among others) if the "Celebrity Apprentice" host could prove he is not the "spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan." Maher was mocking Trump's much-publicized announcement in October that he would donate $5 million to charity if Obama would release his college records.
On Tuesday, a lawyer for Trump sent the letter to Maher with the birth certificate attached, asking the "Real Time" host to make good on his late-night offer:
T-rump
Now Richer Than Romney
Al Gore
Post-vice presidential life has been very good to Al Gore.
Thanks to the $500 million sale of his liberal news station Current TV to Al Jazeera this month, Gore now has a personal fortune of $300 million, Forbes magazine estimates. That puts him ahead of Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, whose estimated $230 million left him vulnerable to charges that he was out of touch with the common man.
The financial publication ascribes Gore's wealth to a series of savvy investments that substantially multiplied the $2 million he listed as assets when he ran and lost the presidential race to George W. Bush in 2000.
From his reported 20 percent share of Current, Gore will receive a $100 million pre-tax payday. But that's not the only evidence of his golden touch. Forbes notes that Gore holds more than $35 million in stock and options through his work as a board member of Apple and could have received a hefty compensation package from his stint as a senior adviser on environmental issues to Google, which started before the search giant went public.
Also filling Gore's coffers was his work in financial services companies like Metropolitan West Financial and his position in Generation Investment Management, which he co-founded with former Goldman Sachs executive David Blood. That company handles some $7 billion in assets, Forbes reports.
Al Gore
Husband Extended As Conservator
Zsa Zsa
Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband will remain the ailing actress' conservator until at least August and will have to account for her assets, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Fredric von Anhalt has served as his wife's conservator since July after the actress' daughter questioned whether he was providing proper medical care and appropriately managing her finances.
An attorney appointed to represent Gabor's interests wrote in a report that von Anhalt has generally been a good steward of his wife and has complied with terms of a settlement that required strict financial oversight. The report by attorney LeAnne Maillian states it appears von Anhalt had used some of his wife's money to pay his own expenses, but that he has already repaid it.
Superior Court Judge Reva Goetz said Frederic von Anhalt should provide details about his wife's finances by July so that she can review details before she reviews the case again on Aug. 21.
Zsa Zsa
So Hot, New Colors Added To Weather Map
Australia
The forecast in Australia: Hot, hot, hot-and getting hotter.
As a record-breaking heatwave hovers over many regions and territories (which are in their summer months now), the continent's Bureau of Meteorology has added two new colors to the weather map to reflect the rising mercury.
The map currently shows the weather in orange tones at the top, which indicate temperatures 40 to 48 degrees Celsius. But forecasts are predicting off-the-charts weather. As a result, pink and purple will now cover temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius-should it climb that high.
For those rusty on the temperature conversion, that is a sweat-inducing 122 degrees Fahrenheit. (The record-setting temperature of 50.7 set in 1960 has, thankfully, still not been broken.)
Australia
New Token
Monopoly
The gig is almost up for one of the eight Monopoly tokens. But which will it be? Iron? Thimble? Top Hat?
Hasbro is holding a Facebook contest to eliminate one of the eight tokens that identify the players and introduce a new one. Possible new tokens include a cat, diamond ring, guitar, toy robot and helicopter
It's the latest effort by the toymaker to jazz up the game which debuted almost eight decades ago.
Monopoly's tokens have actually changed quite a lot over the years. The original version also included a lantern, purse, cannon and a rocking horse. A horse and rider token was used in the 1950s. During World War II, metal tokens were replaced by wooden ones.
Up for elimination: all eight current tokens including a battleship, iron, racecar, Scottie dog, shoe, thimble, top hat and wheelbarrow. Most tokens were introduced with the first Parker Brothers iteration of the game in 1935, and the Scottie dog and wheelbarrow were added in the early 1950s.
Monopoly
Statue For CA Park
Yoda
A Northern California city has approved a new downtown park to be built on land donated by filmmaker George Lucas that will feature statues of Indiana Jones and Yoda, two of his most popular characters.
The Marin Independent Journal reports that the San Anselmo Planning Commission voted unanimously Monday to approve the park, which could be completed as soon as June 1.
Lucas donated land for the 8,700-square-foot park. A commercial building on the site will be demolished at Lucas' expense, and an historic fresco relocated.
The park's Yoda fountain will be similar to the one located at the Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco.
Yoda
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