Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Andrew Tobias: The 50-Cent Microscope
If you're affluent, the U.S. health care system is #1. (On average, it's #37.) And if you're really affluent, you should be thrilled that House Republicans just voted for the 50th time to repeal Obamacare. It takes resources from those like you - now taxed $380,000 more on each $10 million you earn from dividends and capital gains - and gives health care to the poor, who obviously have done nothing to deserve it. (Other than cleaning your toilets and trimming your hedges.) (Or raising children.) (Or being children.)
Stuart Jeffries: "Diana Rigg: 'Women of my age are still attractive. Men of my age are not'" (Guardian)
Soon to appear in the new season of Game of Thrones, the actor talks about her long career, how to deal with getting older and why she talks to pigeons.
Alok Jha: "Cosmos: how Seth Macfarlane has remade Carl Sagan's classic TV series" (Guardian)
The creator of Family Guy and Ted has put his millions into a lavish 13-part show that befits 21st-century science.
Phil Plait: "'Cosmos': On the Shores of the Cosmic Ocean" (Slate)
As I write this, the world premiere of the new, updated version of "Cosmos" just aired. I've been waiting for this a long, long, time-I first wrote about it in 2011!-and I can say, I'm happy with it. It was lovingly done, fun to watch, and had me wanting more.
The Scribblin' Samurai (Slate)
Dana Stevens answers reader questions during a Reddit AMA.
Liel Leibovitz: Dungeons & Dragons Is Basically a Nerdier Spin on Judaism (Tablet)
The popular role-playing game, published 40 years ago this week, demands nearly Talmudic attention.
Felix Clay: 4 People Who Really Are Making the World a Better Place (Cracked)
Before we get too deep into this, I want you to know I don't believe in magic. I don't think any of these people have ever fought a Balrog outside of Street Fighter, and they probably can't make flashlights out of twigs and a hunk of quartz. But I do think they represent purity and goodness of purpose in much the way our friend Gandalf the White did in the world of Middle-earth.
Michael Ann Dobbs: Great Children's Books That Look Death in the Eye (io9)
Children's stories have been dealing with death since the days of fairy tales where the Princess doesn't wake up. And some of the most soulful depictions of death aimed at kids come from the science fiction and fantasy genres. Except, in the ever-optimistic tone of children's books, death is a mirror for how wonderful life is.
Robert T. Gonzalez: 6 Possible Secrets to Happiness, According to Science (io9)
6. STOP IT. Stop trying to be happy. If you take away one thing from this post, let this be it: to be happy, there's a decent chance you'll have to stop trying to be happy. Sorry to get all zen-master on you, but that's the way it is.
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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
Hot and dry.
CBS News Correspondent Resigns
Sharyl Attkisson
Emmy-winning journalist Sharyl Attkisson has announced her resignation from CBS News after working as the network's Washington-based investigative correspondent for nearly two decades.
"CBS News veteran Sharyl Attkisson is leaving the news division to pursue other endeavors. We appreciate her many contributions and we wish her well," said CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair.
Attkisson first joined CBS News in September 1993 as a co-anchor of its overnight broadcast "Up to the Minute" before becoming a Washington-based correspondent in January 1995. She was awarded an Investigative Emmy in 2002 for her series of exclusive reports about mismanagement at the Red Cross and went on to win another Emmy in October 2013 for her reporting on "The Business of Congress."
Politico is reporting that Attkisson's departure is the result of "months of hard-fought negotiations," stemming from Attkisson's frustrations with what she perceived as a liberal bias and a lack of investigative reporting.
Sharyl Attkisson
Church Drops Case
Rev. Thomas Ogletree
The United Methodist Church announced on Monday it was dropping its case against a New York clergyman accused of defying church policy by officiating at his son's same-sex wedding.
The church said a trial over the actions of the Rev. Thomas Ogletree, a former dean at Yale University's divinity school, could cause "harmful polarization" during the ongoing debate over the church's stance on gay unions.
The move came three months after a Pennsylvania pastor was defrocked after a church judicial proceeding found him guilty of officiating at his son's same-sex wedding. Instead of facing trial, Ogletree will participate in a series of conversations about the church's policy toward homosexual unions, a church official said.
"Church trials produce no winners," Bishop Martin McLee, the leader of the church's New York Annual Conference, said in a statement.
"Church trials result in harmful polarization and continue the harm brought upon our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters," the bishop wrote.
Rev. Thomas Ogletree
Unveils Music Player
Neil Young
Singer-songwriter Neil Young announced plans Monday to launch a high-definition portable music player and download service, saying it will improve the experience of listening to digital music on the go.
The Canadian-born musician, a longtime critic of the quality of digital music, said he would be launching an online store for music downloads as well as a portable player through his new company, PonoMusic.
"We want to move digital music into the 21st century and PonoMusic does that. We couldn't be more excited -- not for ourselves, but for those that are moved by what music means in their lives."
The PonoPlayer will be sold online for $399 on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter later this week, the statement said.
Neil Young
Selling Art Collection
Jonathan Demme
A riot of color greeted Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme the first time he walked into Haitian Corner, an art gallery around the corner from his Manhattan apartment. Instantly transfixed, he left with a $250 painting by Haitian master Wilson Bigaud. The seed was planted.
Demme's appreciation for work by self-taught Haitian painters like Bigaud and Hector Hyppolite flowered into an obsession that he fed with multiple trips to the cash poor but artistically rich island nation, where he learned Creole and shot two documentaries.
Now 70 and having spent the better part of three decades amassing pieces from Haiti and other Caribbean countries as well as the United States, South America and Africa, the director of "The Silence of the Lambs" said he's looking to "streamline and simplify" his life by selling 90 percent of his well-regarded collection of self-taught or "outsider" art.
More than 900 pieces - many of them by artists with little or no formal training but abundant talent - will be auctioned at Philadelphia's Material Culture on March 29-30. The sale will be preceded by a weeklong exhibition that is free and open to the public.
Jonathan Demme
Aim Ire At Kochs
Senate Dems
Democratic Senate candidates, facing withering criticism on the national health care law, are gambling they can turn voters against two billionaire brothers funding the attacks - even if few Americans would recognize the pair on the street.
In an accelerating counteroffensive stretching from the Senate chamber to Alaska, Democrats are denouncing Charles and David Koch, the key figures behind millions of dollars in conservative TV ads hammering Democratic candidates and their ties to President Barack Obama.
Democrats depict the Kansas-based Koch brothers as self-serving oil barons who pay huge sums to try to "buy" elections and advance their agenda of low taxes and less regulation. And they're using unusually harsh language in the Senate.
Charles Koch, 78, and David Koch, 73, inherited a small oil company from their father. They expanded worldwide into chemicals, textiles, paper and other products, building a hugely profitable and privately held conglomerate.
Long active in conservative politics, they seized on the 2010 Citizens United court ruling that allows unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns, often without disclosing donors. They helped found Americans for Prosperity, which reported spending $122 million on elections in 2012.
Senate Dems
California Officer Sues
Whitney Houston
A Beverly Hills police sergeant is suing the city, claiming he faced retaliation after reporting that a detective made inappropriate remarks about Whitney Houston's body at her death scene.
City News Service says Sgt. Brian Weir filed the suit Monday in Los Angeles.
Houston was 48 when she drowned in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton two years ago. Weir contends that a detective sergeant kneeling by the singer's body removed a sheet and remarked that she was "still looking good," along with similar comments.
Weir says that when he reported the alleged remarks, he was harassed, removed from the SWAT and K-9 units and denied promotions.
Police Lt. Lincoln Hoshino says he wasn't aware of the lawsuit but that he considers similar claims Weir made earlier to be baseless.
Whitney Houston
Court Rules For Landowner
Trail Dispute
The Supreme Court on Monday sided with a Wyoming property owner in a dispute over a bicycle trail that follows the route of an abandoned railroad, a decision that could force the government to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate landowners.
The justices ruled 8-1 that property owner Marvin Brandt remains the owner of a 200-foot-wide trail that crosses his 83-acre parcel in southern Wyoming's Medicine Bow National Forest. The trail once was the path of a railroad and is among thousands of miles of abandoned railroads that have been converted to recreational trails.
Chief Justice John Roberts (R-1%) said the government was wrong to assert that it owns the trail.
The government says it faces compensation claims involving 10,000 properties in 30 states, possibly topping $100 million.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in dissent the court's decision "undermines the legality of thousands of miles of former rights of way that the public now enjoys as means of transportation and recreation."
Trail Dispute
Rhode Island
Hot Wiener
Don't call them hot dogs and don't ask for ketchup.
Those are the cardinal rules at Olneyville New York System, arguably the best-known Rhode Island spot for one of the state's signature dishes: hot wieners.
"Dish" is probably an overstatement. These are veal, pork and beef wieners slathered with mustard, covered in special meat sauce, topped with chopped onions and celery salt, and served in a steamed bun. Ordering one with all the fixings is called "all the way." Many say all the way is the only way.
The $2.15 wieners are small so lots of customers order a few at a time. The grillers prepare them in a way that's known as "up the arm" - balancing a row of buns and wieners on their forearms, then adding each ingredient in quick, choreographed succession.
Hot Wiener
Some People Don't Like Music
Why
Who doesn't appreciate a good tune? Apparently, some people don't "get" music, researchers have found.
Although these people may be capable of experiencing pleasure in other ways - such as through food, money or sex - they don't enjoy music, according to a study published online today (March 6) in the journal Current Biology.
Scientists have long known about amusia, a specific impairment in music perception that can be either innate or acquired - for instance, as a result of brain damage. This impairment can prevent people from processing music in the way most people do. But the participants in the new study did not have amusia, and yet they were still indifferent to music, the researchers found.
"What we found was that there were people who specifically didn't enjoy music, but they enjoyed other kinds of rewards," said study author Josep Marco-Pallarés of the University of Barcelona.
The study's authors called this condition "specific musical anhedonia," an inability to experience pleasure from music.
Why
In Memory
Joe McGinniss
Joe McGinniss wasn't one to let a story tell itself.
Whether insisting on the guilt of a murder suspect after seemingly befriending him or moving next door to Sarah Palin's house for a most unauthorized biography, McGinniss was unique in his determination to get the most inside information, in how publicly he burned bridges with his subjects and how memorably he placed himself in the narrative.
McGinniss, the adventurous and news-making author and reporter who skewered the marketing of Richard Nixon in "The Selling of the President 1968" and tracked his personal journey from sympathizer to scourge of convicted killer Jeffrey MacDonald in the blockbuster "Fatal Vision," died Monday at age 71.
McGinniss, who announced last year that he had been diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer, died from complications related to his disease. His attorney and longtime friend Dennis Holahan said he died at a hospital in Worcester, Mass. Optimistic almost to the end, he had for months posted regular updates on Facebook and Twitter, commenting on everything from foreign policy to his health.
The tall, talkative McGinniss had early dreams of becoming a sports reporter and wrote books about soccer, horse racing and travel. But he was best known for two works that became touchstones in their respective genres - campaign books ("The Selling of the President") and true crime ("Fatal Vision"). In both cases, he had become fascinated by the difference between public image and private reality.
McGinniss was a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1968 when an advertising man told him he was joining Hubert Humphrey's presidential campaign. Intrigued that candidates had advertising teams, McGinniss was inspired to write a book and tried to get access to Humphrey. The Democrat turned him down, but, according to McGinniss, Nixon aide Leonard Garment allowed him in, one of the last times the ever-suspicious Nixon would permit a journalist so much time around him. Garment and other Nixon aides were apparently unaware, or unconcerned, that McGinniss' heart was very much with the anti-war agitators the candidate so despised.
The Republican's victory that fall capped a once-unthinkable comeback for the former vice-president, who had declared six years earlier that he was through with politics. Having lost the 1960 election in part because of his pale, sweaty appearance during his first debate with John F. Kennedy and aware of his reputation as a partisan willing to play dirty, Nixon had restricted his public outings and presented himself as a new and more mature candidate.
McGinniss was far from the only writer to notice Nixon's reinvention, but few offered such raw and unflattering details. "The Selling of the President" was a sneering rebuttal to Theodore H. White's stately "Making of the President" campaign books. It revealed Nixon aides, including Roger Ailes, disparaging vice-presidential candidate Spiro Agnew, drafting memos on how to fix Nixon's "cold" image and debating which black man - only one would be permitted - was right for participating in a televised panel discussion.
In 1979, he was a columnist for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner when an argument without end was born: McGinniss was approached by MacDonald, a fellow California resident, about a possible book on the 1970 killings for which the physician and former Green Beret was being charged.
In the early hours of Feb. 17, 1970, MacDonald's pregnant wife and two small children were stabbed and beaten to death at the family's home in Fort Bragg, N.C. The date, location and identities of the victims are virtually the only facts of the case not in dispute.
"Fatal Vision," published in 1983, became one of the most widely read and contested true crime books. McGinniss wrote not just of the case but of his own conclusions. He had at first found MacDonald charming and sincere but came to believe he was a sociopath who'd committed the killings while in a frenzied state brought on by diet pills.
McGinniss, who had been working on a book about his illness, wrote openly about his personal and professional follies and setbacks, whether cheating on his first wife or helping himself to the gourmet crabmeat in Styron's kitchen. He struggled financially at times and battled depression and alcohol abuse. A 1993 biography of Sen. Kennedy, "The Last Brother," was widely ridiculed for including invented dialogue.
None of his latter books approached the popularity of "Fatal Vision" or such other crime works as "Cruel Doubt" and "Blind Faith." He returned a $1 million advance to write a book on the O.J. Simpson murder trial, expressing disgust that the former football star had been acquitted.
But by the 21st century he had cleaned himself up. He was an enthusiastic commentator on Facebook, posting regular updates about his health and current events. And he was back in the news, if not on the bestseller lists, with a biography of Palin, "The Rogue," which failed to sell many copies despite allegations of drug use and a premarital fling Palin had with basketball star Glen Rice. The real headlines were in the reporting: Anxious for a close look into Palin's world, McGinniss scored a front-row seat when he rented a house next door to her in Wasilla, Alaska.
Joe McGinniss
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