Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Matt Miller: Did Somebody Say We're at War? (Washington Post)
The way we've compartmentalized our current tax debate-and kept it hermetically sealed from the fact that we're a nation at war-is evidence of the moral rot from which our enemies say America suffers.
Jim Hightower: Offshoring America's Legal Jobs
Maybe you're one of the thousands of young lawyers in America working in some low-skill, part-time job because law firms have cut so many of the starting positions you were educated to take. If so, I have good news: Jobs for young lawyers are now mushrooming in companies that provide legal services to U.S. corporations.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: The End of the Rabbi As Mr. Nice Guy (Huffington Post)
... our rabbi is amazing. He never creates the discomfort of making us question our vacuous lives. He never lectures us to spend less on ourselves and more on the needy. Rather than rebuking us for squandering our potential on crass TV and mindless celebrity gossip, why, he can actually join the conversation about the latest movies with the best of them.
Froma Harrop: How The Kardashians Can Really Shock Us (Creators Syndicate)
If you don't already know about the Kardashian sisters, you probably don't want to know. Kourtney, Kim and Khloe have grown very rich dressing like tramps and otherwise exhibiting themselves, including sessions on the toilet (viewable on their E! channel program, "Keeping up With the Kardashians").
Marisa Meltzer: The Quotable Diana Vreeland?(Slate)
How the longtime Vogue editor changed fashion-speak.
Interviews by Joanna Moorhead: Fitness for older people (Guardian)
Fitness fanatics in their 60s, 70s and 80s explain what motivates them to hit the pool or pull on their running shoes
'An Object of Beauty'
Steve Martin's novel tracks a "rake's progress" through a trend-maddened art world. Brooke Allen reviews 'An Object of Beauty.'
MARSHALL HEYMAN: A Kids' Book Club for Adults (Wall Street Journal)
New York can be a place where people with like-minded interests, especially in literature, can find each other.
Mark Morford: The 10 Most Awesome Records of 2010 (San Francisco Gate)
1) The National - High Violet. Ultra-premium rainy day/sigh at the moon/sip your whisky/wallow in the bathtub/ponder the Endtimes/crave a warm companion/nurse your wounds/ache for a simpler time/masturbate slowly for an hour and then go to bed and dream of navigating a small boat through a quiet storm of existential angst music.
Gerrick D. Kennedy: "Appreciating Teena Marie: 'The Ivory Queen of Soul' made R&B colorless" (Los Angeles Times)
Had the songstress not crossed over, R&B might not be the embracing, ever-evolving genre that it is today.
BRETT ARENDS: Is This the Peak for Netflix? (Wall Street Journal)
These are boom times for Netflix. It's been one of the big winners from the recession. Last quarter's revenues were 31% higher than a year earlier. Earnings were up 35% and had doubled since the summer of 2008.
Susan King: 'The Illusionist' honors Jacques Tati's vision (Los Angeles Times)
Sylvain Chomet 'fell in love' with Tati's unproduced script from the 1950s and captures the French actor-director's style in his animated film.
David Bruce has 39 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $39 you can buy 9,750 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," and "Maximum Cool."
The Weekly Poll
New Question
The '2010 Good, Bad, and Butt-Ugly' Edition...
Well, then, Poll-Fans... Let's do our own '2010 Year in Review' thing, eh?
Be-damn'd to all those other corporate media lists, I'm sayin'... I'm thinkin' we can do it better, Dagnabbit! (Or, at least have us some more fun at it and all...)
Everything and everybody is fair game... People, events, TV shows, Movies, Books, Music, Weather, inanimate objects... you get the idea, right?
Have at it, then, would ya now?...
A.) The 'Good'...
B.) The 'Bad'...
C.) And the downright dad-blamed 'Butt-Ugly'...
Send your response to
wrote:
took the day off.
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Cold and more rain.
List Trashes Celebrity Health Tips
"Science Sense"
Science campaigners laid bare some of the most dubious celebrity-endorsed health tips on Wednesday, rubbishing ideas such as reabsorbing sperm and wearing silicone bracelets to boost energy.
In an annual list of what it sees as the year's worst abuses against science, the Sense About Science (SAS) campaign group debunked diet and exercise suggestions made by actors, pop stars and others in the public eye in an effort "to help the celebrities realize where they are going wrong and to help the public make sense of celebrity claims."
In the health and fitness section, SAS noted that soccer player David Beckham and Prince William's fiancee Kate Middleton have both been spotted wearing hologram-embedded silicone bracelets which makers claim can improve energy and fitness.
It also listed a diet reportedly used by supermodel Naomi Campbell and actors Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore in which followers survive on maple syrup, lemon and pepper alone for up to two weeks. Campbell told U.S. TV host Oprah Winfrey in an interview in May: "It's good to clean out your body once in a while."
"Science Sense"
Worst Primetime Ratings Since 1996
CNN
CNN may still reach more total-day viewers than its competition, but the news network this year suffered its worst primetime performance among total viewers and the key adults 25-54 demographic since at least 1996, according to Mediabistro's TV Newser.
In primetime, the network was down 34% compared to 2009 in both total viewers (591,000) and adults 25-54 (173,000), according to the report.
CNN's highest-rated program was once again the recently-ended "Larry King Live," which placed 18th among cable news shows with an average of 672,000 total viewers and 176,000 in the core demo. The show's final editions performed strongly, but it was still King's weakest year for the channel, TV Newser said. Piers Morgan will assume King's 9 p.m. slot next year.
CNN
Demands Autopsy Show Cancellation
Jackson Estate
Executors of Michael Jackson's estate demanded Wednesday that the Discovery Channel cancel plans for a show purporting to re-enact the dead superstar's autopsy.
John Branca and John McClain fired off an angry letter Wednesday to Discovery Communications calling the planned show "in shockingly bad taste" and insensitive to the feelings of Jackson's family.
They accused the company of being motivated by "blind desire to exploit Michael's death, while cynically attempting to dupe the public into believing this show will have serious medical value."
Branca and McClain said they were especially outraged by an Internet ad now circulating for the show, "Michael Jackson's Autopsy."
Jackson Estate
Nixing $25,000 Chip After Casino Heist
Bellagio
Las Vegas casino bosses are serving notice to the bandit who made off with $1.5 million in chips from the Bellagio: Try to redeem those worth $25,000 soon or they'll become worthless.
Bellagio owner MGM Resorts International is giving public notice that it's discontinuing its standard chip valued at $25,000 and calling for all gamblers holding the chips to redeem them by April 22.
After that, gambling regulators say each red chip with a gray inlay won't be worth more than the plastic it's cast from.
MGM Resorts first posted notice of the redemption last week in the classifieds of the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper. That's one week after a robber wearing a motorcycle helmet held up a craps table at gunpoint and made off with a bag of chips of varying denominations.
Bellagio
Completes Probation Months Early
Nicole Richie
Nicole Richie is no longer on probation for a 2006 drunken-driving case.
A spokeswoman for the reality star-turned-fashion designer says a judge ended Richie's probation Wednesday after receiving proof that the 29-year-old had satisfied its terms.
Publicist Nicole Perna says Richie was to remain on probation until February, but the judge agreed to end probation early because Richie completed its requirements, including attending an 18-month alcohol-education program.
Nicole Richie
Kills Plants
Coal Plant
Along a stretch of Highway 21, in a pastoral, hilly region of Texas, is a vegetative wasteland. Trees are barren, or covered in gray, dying foliage and peeling bark. Fallen, dead limbs litter the ground where pecan growers and ranchers have watched trees die slow, agonizing deaths.
Visible above the horizon is what many plant specialists, environmentalists and scientists believe to be the culprit: the Fayette Power Project - a coal-fired power plant for nearly 30 years has operated mostly without equipment designed to decrease emissions of sulfur dioxide, a component of acid rain.
The plant's operator and the state's environmental regulator deny sulfur dioxide pollution is to blame for the swaths of plant devastation across Central Texas. But evidence collected from the Appalachian Mountains to New Mexico indicates sulfur dioxide pollution kills vegetation, especially pecan trees. Pecan growers in Albany, Ga., have received millions of dollars in an out-of-court settlement with a power plant whose sulfur dioxide emissions harmed their orchards.
Now, extensive tree deaths are being reported elsewhere in Texas, home to 19 coal-fired power plants - more than any other state. Four more are in planning stages. In each area where the phenomenon is reported, a coal-fired power plant operates nearby.
The Fayette Power Project sits on a 10-square-mile site about 60 miles southeast of Austin, near where horticulturalist Jim Berry, who owns a wholsesale nursery in Grand Saline, Texas, describes a 30-mile stretch of Highway 21 as a place where "the plant community was just devastated."
Coal Plant
Stratagem For Invasion
Lionfish
Florida marine conservationists have come up with a simple recipe for fighting the invading lionfish that is gobbling up local reef life -- eat them.
The Key Largo-based REEF conservation organization has just released "The Lionfish Cookbook," a collection of 45 recipes which is the group's latest strategy to counter an invasion of the non-native reddish brown-striped fish in Florida waters.
Red lionfish, a prickly predator armed with flaring venomous spines like a lion's mane that give them their name, are native to the South Pacific, Indian Ocean and Red Sea.
With few natural predators, they have been rapidly expanding in Caribbean and Atlantic waters, voraciously preying on local fish, shrimp and crab populations across the region and in Florida, which has world-famous coral reefs.
Some scientists are now listing the invasive lionfish species among the top 15 threats to global biodiversity.
Lionfish
In Memory
Agathe von Trapp
Agathe von Trapp, a member of the musical family whose escape from Nazi-occupied Austria was the basis for "The Sound of Music," has died, a longtime friend said Wednesday.
Von Trapp, 97, died Tuesday at a hospice in the Baltimore suburb of Towson after suffering congestive heart failure in November, said Mary Louise Kane. Kane and von Trapp lived together for five decades and ran a kindergarten at the Sacred Heart Catholic parish in nearby Glyndon until 1993.
Von Trapp was the oldest daughter of Austrian naval Capt. Georg Ritter von Trapp. His seven children by his first wife, Agathe Whitehead von Trapp, were the basis for the singing family in the 1959 play and 1965 film, which won the Oscar for best picture.
The widowed captain had three more children with his second wife, Maria Augusta Kutschera. They performed together as the Trapp Family Singers.
Agathe, a guitarist, was represented in the film by 16-going-on-17 Liesl, played by Charmian Carr. But Agathe was far more reserved than the outgoing Liesl, Kane said.
Although Agathe admired the movie, she felt it misrepresented her father as too strict and not as the loving, caring parent he was, Kane said.
Agathe's death leaves four surviving members of the Trapp Family Singers: Maria von Trapp, 96; Rosmarie von Trapp, 81; Elenore "Lorli" von Trapp Campbell, 79; and Johannes, 71.
Agathe von Trapp
In Memory
Billy Taylor
Billy Taylor, an acclaimed jazz pianist and composer who became one of the genre's most ardent advocates through radio, television and the landmark Jazzmobile arts venture, has died at age 89.
Taylor died Tuesday of a heart attack in Manhattan, said his wife, Theodora Taylor. "He enjoyed his life," she said. "Music was his love."
Though he had a noteworthy career as a musician and composer that spanned decades, and played with luminaries such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, Billy Taylor was probably best known as a tireless jazz booster, educator and broadcaster.
He was the first black to lead a television studio orchestra in the 1950s. He founded Jazzmobile in the 1960s - a mobile, outdoor stage begun on a parade float that would take free music to inner city neighborhoods. He was host of a popular jazz show on National Public Radio from 1977 to 1982.
And, in what he later called one of his more significant accomplishments, he profiled musicians for CBS' Sunday Morning show - winning an Emmy Award in 1983 for a piece on Quincy Jones.
William Taylor was born July 24, 1921, in Greenville, N.C., but he grew up mostly in Washington, D.C. After graduating from Virginia State College, where he studied sociology and music in the 1940s, he moved to New York City to forge a career as a jazz pianist.
He lucked out, landing a gig playing with Ben Webster, Big Sid Catlett and Charlie Drayton opposite the Art Tatum Trio, he told an interviewer in 1994.
His went on to lead the Billy Taylor Trio, and composed dozens of pieces for ensembles as well as more than 300 songs, including the popular "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free."
Besides his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Kim Taylor-Thompson, a law professor at New York University. A son, Duane, died in 1988. Funeral arrangements were pending.
Billy Taylor
In Memory
Grant McCune
Oscar-winning "Star Wars" visual-effects designer Grant McCune, who created scenes with models and miniature films for more than three decades, has died of pancreatic cancer, his production company said on Wednesday. He was 67.
McCune, who died Monday at his home in Hidden Hills, 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles, won his Oscar for 1977's "Star Wars," the original installment in George Lucas' six-film sci-fi franchise. He shared the honor with John Stears, John Dykstra, Richard Edlund and Robert Blalack.
McCune also was nominated for an Oscar in 1980 for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."
Armed with a bachelor's degree in biology, McCune got his start on "Jaws," when he and Bill Shourt were hired to make a giant white shark model; neither was credited on the film.
He later became a partner at Apogee Prods., where he worked on three dozen films, including "Die Hard," "Never Say Never Again," "Big," "Space Balls" and "Caddyshack." Striking out on his own, McCune such films as "Speed," "Batman Forever," "U.S. Marshals," "Red Planet," "U-571," "Spider-Man" and "Serenity."
He is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.
Grant McCune
In Memory
Aron Abrams
Police in Hawaii are investigating the death of a Los Angeles writer and producer who was found in a room at an unnamed Waikoloa resort.
According to a statement from police on the Big Island, 50-year-old Aron Abrams was found dead Christmas morning after police and emergency personnel were summoned. An autopsy is set for Friday.
The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reports that Abrams was a writer and co-executive producer of "Everybody Hates Chris." The program, starring Chris Rock, was nominated in 2006 for "Best New Series" by the Writers Guild of America.
He also was a supervising producer of "Grounded for Life," co-producer of "3rd Rock from the Sun," and a consulting producer of the long-running animated Fox series "King of the Hill."
Aron Abrams
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
