Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Sue Halpern: Who Was Steve Jobs? (New York Review of Books)
How else to explain their popularity despite the fact that they actually come from places that do not make us better people for owning them, the factories in China where more than a dozen young workers have committed suicide, some by jumping; where workers must now sign a pledge stating that they will not try to kill themselves but if they do, their families will not seek damages; where three people died and fifteen were injured when dust exploded; where 137 people exposed to a toxic chemical suffered nerve damage…
Mike Archer: Ordering the vegetarian meal? There's more animal blood on your hands (The Conversation)
The challenge for the ethical eater is to choose the diet that causes the least deaths and environmental damage. There would appear to be far more ethical support for an omnivorous diet that includes rangeland-grown red meat and even more support for one that includes sustainably wild-harvested kangaroo.
Scott Burns: Endurance Investing (AssetBuilder)
Do investments and saving matter? It's a good question for any Christmas Day, but lots of people have particular reason to ask that question now. Barring a long awaited visit from the Tooth Fairy, it is likely the S&P 500 index- the index that represents about 74 percent of U.S. equity market value- will close the year at a loss or near loss.
Take Your Speakers, and Stick Them in Your Ear (Letters of Note)
'A whiny letter from a disgruntled student named Dave Hubbard appeared in the Amherst Student … this guy was dismayed because others had dared to complain about the constant stream of loud music coming from his room, and he worried that "partying" of any sort would soon be banned on campus. A few days later the following letter appeared in the same paper. It was a response to Hubbard's rant, written by a fellow student. The student was David Foster Wallace. He didn't waste a single word.
David L. Ulin: "Critic's Notebook: Patti Smith's 'Woolgathering'" (LA Times)
In this reissue, the poet's seamless blending of the practical and mythic is featured across 11 impressionistic pieces."
Susan King: "Classic Hollywood: 'The Donna Reed Show'" (LA Times)
Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen recall their strong-willed TV mom and 'second mother.'
Roger Ebert: The Best Documentaries of 2011
… all of these year-end Best lists serve one useful purpose: They tell you about good movies you may not have seen or heard about. The more films on my list that aren't on yours, the better job I've done.
Mark Morford: Top 10 Most Awesome Records of 2011(SF Gate)
It's that time of year again, when my friend Andy sends out a hotly excitable e-mail asking a dozen of his most music-crazed friends -- sound engineers, clubsters, DJs, anyone for whom music is less a casual dalliance and more like lifeblood -- to compile their personal lists of the year's best music, so we can all discover something new and/or gently mock each others' weird tastes in African banjo disco, kazoo jazz funk or ambient doom metal.
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'
Bosko Suggests
Penguins
Happy Holidays,
Bosko.
Thanks, Bosko!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and warmer.
25 Films Named
National Film Registry
The U.S. National Film Registry on Wednesday named 25 films to be preserved as cultural treasures ranging from the 1942 Walt Disney classic, "Bambi," to the 1991 psychological thriller "The Silence of the Lambs."
The film list also includes the Academy Award-winning "Forrest Gump" starring Tom Hanks and the post-war noir film "The Big Heat," set in a fictional US town that examined domestic life in the 1950s. It includes Hollywood features, documentaries and animation, spanning the period 1912 to 1994.
Independent filmmaking pioneer director and writer John Cassavetes' "Faces," (1968) that criticized middle class America was selected along with "I, an Actress" (1977) by low-budget filmmaker George Kuchar whose outlandish sensibilities inspired other directors such as John Waters.
Early films included "The Cry of the Children," and "A Cure for Pokeritis," -- both from 1912 -- as well as Charlie Chaplin's first feature, the silent classic, "The Kid" (1921).
Other films included Billy Wilder's drama about alcoholism, "The Lost Weekend" (1945), John Ford's 1924 western "The Iron Horse," and "Norma Rae" (1979) which starred Sally Field as an unlikely single mother activist trying to improve work conditions.
National Film Registry
Archives Purchased
Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie's writings, recordings and artwork will land in his native state after an Oklahoma foundation bought the collection, with plans for a display that concentrates on his artistry rather than the populist politics that divided local opinion over the years.
The George Kaiser Family Foundation, a charitable organization based in Tulsa, announced Wednesday that it purchased the archives and plans to open the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa by the end of 2012 to mark the centennial of the singer's birth.
The foundation did not disclose how much it paid for the collection, which includes the original handwritten copy of "This Land is Your Land." Also included are original musical recordings, handwritten songbooks and almost 3,000 song lyrics, rare books by and about Guthrie, more than 700 pieces of artwork, letters and postcards, more than 500 photographs, Guthrie's annotated record collection and personal papers detailing family matters, his World War II military service and musical career.
The archive had been housed in the Mount Kisco, New York, home of Nora Guthrie, the songwriter's daughter. Woody Guthrie, a native of Okemah, died of Huntington's disease, a hereditary neurodegenerative condition, in 1967 at the age of 55.
Woody Guthrie
Nation Of Mice Electing More Cats
Wealth Gap
The Between Congress and Voters
Both The New York Times and The Washington Post have separate reports today about the widening wealth gap between members of Congress and the people they represent. Almost half of all Congresspeople are millionaires and their median net worth has climbed to $913,000, compared to $100,000 for the rest of America households. According to the Post, that number drops to $725,000 when excluding home equity (and adjusting for inflation), but the same median figure for American families is just $20,500. And that gap has only grown wider in recent years.
The biggest reason for the disparity is the sheer cost of running for office, which is both a full-time job and an expensive undertaking. The average successful House race costs $1.4 million to stage (the average Senate campaign is almost $10 million), and candidates are allowed - and often need - to donate as much as they want to their own effort. The costs of advertising and travel make it increasingly difficult for anyone who doesn't already have money to get their name out there. There have also been concerns raised recently about the ability of politicians to profit from their position, both through contacts made and the ability to trade stock based on privileged information.
Even putting aside the questions of influence and corruption, the biggest concern is that those who elected to Congress are more out of touch with the world of their constituents than ever before. How can they be expected to look out for the interest of citizens when the biggest issues facing them - unemployment, health care, wages - are unknown to most of those who are supposed to be looking out for them? Or worse when addressing those issues directly contradicts their own interest, as when millionaires are asked to vote on a "millionaire's tax"? The biggest political movement of the last year, Occupy Wall Street, has been devoted almost exclusively to addressing the gap between rich and poor, but it's hard to see how any change becomes possible when that gap is greatest among those in a position to do something about it.
Wealth Gap
Related: GOP Congressman Scraping By on Only $400,000 After Taxes
Related: The Net Worth of Congress Rose 23.6% Since 2008
Up & Down Year
Cable News
Fox News Channel continues to dominate the cable news networks despite some erosion during a non-election year.
Nielsen ratings released Wednesday show Fox with a larger audience than CNN and MSNBC combined in prime time and for the day as a whole. Yet Fox was alone among the cable news networks in losing audience from last year, when the midterm election captivated the network's fans.
CNN was up 17 percent in prime time viewership and moved back ahead of MSNBC into second place for the full day among the 25-to-54-year-old audience it considers most valuable to its advertisers.
MSNBC kept its prime-time audience up despite the defection of its popular on-air personality Keith Olbermann to Current TV.
Cable News
Marvel Wins Dispute
Ghost Rider
A New York City judge has ruled comic book publisher Marvel Entertainment owns the rights to the Ghost Rider character in the fiery form that originated in the early 1970s.
Federal Judge Katherine Forrest made the finding Wednesday, tossing out the claims of a man who says he created the motorcycle-driving Ghost Rider with the skeletal head that sometimes had fire blazing from it. A Ghost Rider of the 1950s and '60s was a Western character who rode a horse.
The judge says a writer who brought a 2007 lawsuit to claim ownership rights gave up those rights repeatedly when he signed checks containing language relinquishing all rights to Marvel Entertainment LLC.
Ghost Rider
Producers Skirt Music Union
"Hunger Games"
Taylor Swift, Arcade Fire and the Decemberists are contributing songs to "The Hunger Games" -- but the film's soundtrack isn't music to everyone's ears.
In a video posted on YouTube, American Federation of Musicians union President Ray Hair slams the producers and Lionsgate for recording the score in London instead of with musicians contracted to the American Federation of Musicians' union in the U.S. and Canada.
After the union learned Lionsgate had made preparations to record the movie's score in London, Hair says he contacted the company's music executives to protest -- but the production heads have refused to budge.
Saying "The Hunger Games" is receiving tax subsidies for filming in North Carolina, Hair says, "It's not right for a $2 billion company to go to Europe on taxpayer dollars and deprive ... AFM musicians of a decent living. An American movie with American actors and American crews, with a soundtrack that's uniquely American. ... It's just plain wrong."
Hair says the movie's actors, writers, stage crew and other workers are being paid fair wages, health care, pension contributions and royalty payments according to union standards. "But for the musicians? Zero, zilch, nada," he says.
"Hunger Games"
Most Pirated Films
2011
"Fast Five," "Hangover II" and "Thor" were among the most-pirated movies of 2011, according to a new list from the blog TorrentFreak. But some of the year's other biggest grossers at the global box office -- including the latest "Pirates" movie -- are notably absent from the top 10.
"Fast Five," which grossed $626.1 million worldwide, was downloaded nearly 9.3 million times on BitTorrent, according to TorrentFreak. That's a far cry from last year's chart-topper, "Avatar," which was downloaded more than 16 million times.
"The Hangover Part II," which had a worldwide gross of $581.5 million, was downloaded 8.8 million times. The third-most-pirated movie, "Thor" -- which grossed $448.5 million worldwide -- was downloaded 8.3 million times.
Next on the list are six films that were not among the year's top grossers. They include "Source Code" (7.9 million downloads); "I Am Number Four" (7.7 million); and "Sucker Punch" (7.2 million).
The total number of downloads among this year's top 10 was lower than in 2010, which could be attributed to more legal alternatives, and new piracy alternatives to BitTorrent, like Cyberlockers, according to TorrentFreak.
2011
16-Year Low
Movies
Hollywood has more tricks in its bag than ever with digital 3-D and other new film tools. Yet as the images on screen get bigger and better, movie crowds keep shrinking - down to a 16-year low as 2011's film lineup fell well short of studios' record expectations.
Through New Year's Eve on Saturday, projected domestic revenues for the year stand at $10.2 billion, down 3.5 percent from 2010's, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. Taking higher ticket prices into account, movie attendance is off even more, with an estimated 1.28 billion tickets sold, a 4.4 percent decline and the smallest movie audience since 1995, when admissions totaled 1.26 billion.
Just what has put the movie business in the dumps is anyone's guess - though safe bets include the tight economy, rising ticket prices, backlash against parades of sequels or remakes, and an almost-limitless inventory of portable and at-home gadgetry to occupy people's time.
Strong overseas business has helped make up for shrinking domestic revenues and declining DVD sales. But 2011 was the second-straight year that domestic attendance declined sharply, and audiences generally have been shrinking since 2002, when admissions hit a modern high of 1.6 billion.
Movies
Condom Initiative
Los Angeles Ballot
A ballot initiative requiring Los Angeles porn actors to wear condoms has qualified to go before city voters in a presidential primary election in June, organizers said on Tuesday.
America's second-largest city is home to the multibillion dollar U.S. porn industry, which health advocates say is riddled with sexually transmitted diseases.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation said the city clerk certified the over 71,000 signatures it helped collect, far more than the 41,000 needed for the ballot initiative.
Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, compared the measure to other public health laws that the city enforces, like those regulating massage parlors and smoking in public.
Los Angeles Ballot
Unorthodox Clergymen
Church of the Nativity
The annual cleaning of one of Christianity's holiest churches deteriorated into a brawl between rival clergy Wednesday, as dozens of monks feuding over sacred space at the Church of the Nativity battled each other with brooms until police intervened.
The ancient church, built over the traditional site of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, is shared by three Christian denominations - Roman Catholics, Armenians and Greek Orthodox. Wednesday's fight erupted between Greek and Armenian clergy, with both sides accusing each other of encroaching on parts of the church to which they lay claim.
The monks were tidying up the church ahead of Orthodox Christmas celebrations in early January, following celebrations by Western Christians on Dec. 25. The fight erupted between monks along the border of their respective areas. Some shouted and hurled brooms.
Palestinian security forces rushed in to break up the melee, and no serious injuries were reported. A Palestinian police spokesman would not immediately comment.
A fragile status quo governs relations among the denominations at the ancient church, and to repair or clean a part of the structure is to own it, according to accepted practice. That means that letting other sects clean part of the church could allow one to gain ground at another's expense. Similar fights have taken place during the same late-December cleaning effort in the past.
Church of the Nativity
Rare Bird Lands In Tennessee
Asian Hooded Crane
A rare Asian hooded crane, normally seen only in Southeast Asia, China and Japan, apparently "took a wrong turn" and has joined sandhill cranes wintering at the Hiwassee Refuge in southeast Tennessee, bird experts say, drawing flocks of curious birdwatchers along with it.
"It's a great thrill," said Melinda Welton, conservation chair for the Tennessee Ornithological Society and a bird migration researcher. "People are coming in from all over the country to see this bird."
The bird has been seen every day since mid-December, when the sandhill cranes arrived for their winter residency at the refuge.
Welton said this particular type of crane "nests in southern Russia and northern China and winters in Japan."
Welton said it is unlikely that the bird escaped from captivity, since there are no bands or other markings. Instead she said it's probably a happy freak occurrence that brought it to Tennessee.
Asian Hooded Crane
In Memory
Sam Rivers
Sam Rivers, an internationally known jazz musician who played with Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, has died. He was 88.
Monique Rivers Williams says her father died Monday night from pneumonia.
The Oklahoma native was a saxophonist, flutist and composer.
He started his career in Boston, where he performed with Herb Pomeroy's big band in an ensemble that included future music producer Quincy Jones. In 1964, he moved to New York and was hired by Davis. He played with a diverse group of musicians there that included Gillespie, T-Bone Walker and John Lee Hooker.
He moved to Orlando in the early 1990s and regularly played with a group of jazz musicians whose day jobs were at Walt Disney World.
Sam Rivers
In Memory
James Rizzi
James Rizzi applied his playful, cartoon-like art style to unusual projects worldwide, from Volkswagen Beetles and Japanese train ads to cow sculptures in New York and the front page of a German newspaper.
His creations included images for German postage stamps and a tourist guide to New York published this year. He was the official artist for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and soccer World Cup games in France.
"With his art, what you see is what you get," said Alexander Lieventhal, an executive at Art 28 GmbH & Co. in Stuttgart, Germany, which manages and sells Rizzi's work. "Any child can look at it and understand what he's trying to convey: a celebration of life."
Rizzi, a native of Brooklyn, died Monday at his New York studio at age 61. He had a heart condition, Lieventhal said.
Rizzi studied art at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where his groundbreaking techniques began with three-dimensional constructions that evolved from a youthful failure.
For his classes in painting, printmaking and sculpturing, he had to hand in work for grades in all three subjects. But Rizzi had time to complete only one: a twice-printed etching, with parts of one cut out and mounted on top of the other using wire.
Rizzi stuck with the novelty, nurturing it when he returned to New York, where he made a name as a street artist with a mural.
In 1976, he participated in the exhibition "Thirty Years of American Printmarking" at the Brooklyn Museum. Four years later, he designed the cover for the first album of a new wave band called the Tom Tom Club.
Rizzi enjoyed some of his biggest successes in Germany and Asia.
There, he designed the ring coat for boxer Henry Maske, china for the Rosenthal company, the front page of a newspaper in Hamburg and some vehicular art - a toy-size fire engine and three versions of the 1999 Volkswagen "New Beetle."
In 1996, Lufthansa airlines commissioned him to decorate a jet with stars, birds and travelers.
A school in Duisburg is named for Rizzi; in 2001 came the opening of his office building in Braunschweig, dubbed the "Happy Rizzi House." Last year, an oval stained-glass ceiling the "Rizzi Dome" was unveiled at one of Europe's biggest shopping malls, in Oberhausen.
Rizzi was divorced and had no children. Survivors include his mother, a brother and a sister.
James Rizzi
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