Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Wealth Over Work (NY Times)
Making America Safe for Oligarchy.
Kathy Benjamin: "6 Ways You Can (Accidentally) Attract the Ladies" (Cracked)
#6. Be Effeminate
Robert Evans and Anonymous: 6 Things Nobody Tells You About Working at Disney World (Cracked)
Disney World is the happiest place on Earth, at least according to Disney's copyright lawyers. That description may fit pretty well for kids and a few adults, but working here is a different matter altogether. Don't get me wrong; it's still a Magic Kingdom. But Disney's "magic" is a multifaceted thing, just as liable to make some dude barf on the teacup ride as it is to create precious childhood memories.
Rush Limbaugh: rightwing talkshow host to bestselling children's author (Guardian)
He's no friend of those on the political left, but he knows how to woo kids. He's been named as one of four finalists for book of the year at the Children's and Teen Choice Book Awards.
Oliver Burkeman: "Bryan Cranston: 'I scare people'" (Guardian)
The Breaking Bad star on how playing Walter White changed his life, portraying Lyndon B Johnson on stage - and on the kiss that got him into acting.
Henning Mankell: 'No one should have to face cancer alone' (Guardian)
In his latest update since discovering he has cancer in his neck and lung, the Wallander author explains why every person with the disease needs someone to lean on.
Luisa Dillner: Should I go back to saturated fats? (Guardian)
A Mediterranean diet without too much pasta is likely to fit the bill. Dr David Katz, in an overview of diets in The Annual Review of Public Health concludes that we should eat "food, not too much, mainly plants". The healthiest diet is likely to consist mostly of vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans and seeds (including oil such as olive oil), with some fish, meat, eggs and diary. And the occasional slice of chocolate cake to keep things real.
Robert T. Gonzalez: "About That Giraffe and the Dying Zoo Worker: Your Questions, Answered" (io9)
By now you've probably seen news articles showing a giraffe in a Dutch zoo sharing a tender moment with a terminally ill zoo worker. Do the claims that this giraffe was kissing its human friend goodbye hold up to scientific scrutiny? Let me break it down for you.
Malek Rizkallah: "Crush" (Vimeo)
In "Crush", a pair of dummies are being assembled for a crash test. ?Moments before the test begins, a fateful spark alters the process. ?This event ignites a connection between the couple, driving them to defy their destination.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today

wrote:
said:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ

From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
from Marc Perkel
BartCop
Hello Bartcop fans,
As you all know the untimely passing of Terry was unexpected, even by
him. We all knew he had cancer but we all thought he had some years
left. So some of us who have worked closely with him over the years are
scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. My job, among other
things, is to establish communications with the Bartcop community and
provide email lists and groups for those who might put something
together. Those who want to play an active roll in something coming from
this, or if you are one of Bart's pillars, should send an email to
active@bartcop.com.
So - to let you know what's going on, the guestbook on bartcop.com is
still open for those who want to write something in memory of Bart.
I did an interview on Netroots Radio about Bart's passing
( www.stitcher.com/s?eid=32893545 )
The most active open discussion is on Bart's Facebook page.
( www.facebook.com/bartcop )
You can listen to Bart's theme song here
or here.
( www.bartcop.com/blizing-saddles.mp3 )
( youtu.be/MySGAaB0A9k )
We have opened up the radio show archives which are now free. Listen to
all you want.
( bartcop.com/members )
Bart's final wish was to pay off the house mortgage for Mrs. Bart who is
overwhelmed and so very grateful for the support she has received.
Anyone wanting to make a donation can click on this the yellow donate
button on bartcop.com
But - I need you all to help keep this going. This note
isn't going to directly reach all of Bart's fans. So if you can repost
it on blogs and discussion boards so people can sign up then when we
figure out what's next we can let more people know. This list is just
over 600 but like to get it up to at least 10,000 pretty quick. So
here's the signup link for this email list.
( mailman.bartcop.com/listinfo/bartnews )
Marc Perkel
Thanks, Marc!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
More early May Gray.

Off To Fast Start
Jimmy Fallon
One month in, NBC's generational trade of Jay Leno for Jimmy Fallon at the "Tonight" show is succeeding beyond the hopes of executives who engineered it.
Fallon's fast start is clear in television ratings and even more stark in social media metrics. While too early to declare a new king of late-night TV, the transition is a marked change from how badly NBC fumbled the short-lived switch from Leno to Conan O'Brien in 2009.
When Fallon premiered on "Tonight" during the Olympics, the franchise hit numbers unseen since Johnny Carson's last week in 1992. Things have settled down but Fallon is still comfortably on top. During the week of March 10-14, Fallon averaged 4.26 million viewers to Jimmy Kimmel's 2.83 million on ABC and David Letterman's 2.78 million on CBS, the Nielsen company said. Fallon has consistently topped the 4.1 million viewers that Leno averaged this season before leaving.
Fallon's lead over his rivals is more pronounced among viewers aged 18-to-49, the demographic NBC bases its advertising sales upon.
Jimmy Fallon

Taking on National Geographic Reality Shows
'Mystery Science Theater 3000'
The "Mystery Science Theater 3000" guys - well, the one guy and two robots - are coming back to TV. And this time it will be reality shows, rather than bad movies, that they'll be skewering.
The trio hosted a cult series that ran for more than decade on the Comedy Channel and Sci-Fi Channel in which Michael J. Nelson and robots Tom Servo (Kevin Murphy) and Crow T. Robot (Bill Corbett) made snide, droll and almost always dead-on comments as the movie played in the background. They've continued to crack wise on their web site, Rifftrax.com, since leaving the air.
Nat Geo is bringing them back on Tuesday - that's April Fool's Day, but the channel insists this is for real - for "Total Riff Off." It will be three hour-long episodes featuring clips from some of National Geographic's wackier reality shows.
'Mystery Science Theater 3000'
Shows Postponed
Gregg Allman
The Allman Brothers have postponed the remainder of their Beacon Theatre run this week due to Gregg Allman's illness.
A Monday news release says Allman is recovering from a case of bronchitis that already forced the postponement of concerts last Friday and Saturday.
Michael Lehman, Allman's manager, had said over the weekend the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member was under a doctor's care and intended to play the final four shows of the run Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The band is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year.
New dates have not yet been announced.
Gregg Allman

Wedding News
Berti - Bocelli
Singer Andrea Bocelli has wed longtime companion Veronica Berti.
A Monday news release says the couple married Friday at the Sanctuary of Montenero in central Italy. The couple chose the day because it is the start of spring and the second birthday of their daughter, Virginia.
The wedding was attended by a small group of friends and family, including Bocelli's sons Amos and Matteo from his previous marriage.
Berti wore a silk dress by Ermanno Scervino and Bocelli, an Italian tenor who sings both operatic and pop material, wore a blue suit by Corneliani.
Berti - Bocelli
5-Day "Staycation"
Judge Joe Brown
The star of the television show "Judge Joe Brown" has been arrested and charged with five counts of contempt of court in Tennessee.
Shelby County Juvenile Court officials said the 66-year-old Brown was sentenced to five days in jail after causing an outburst Monday in a courtroom hearing. A spokesman for the Shelby County Juvenile Court, chief Magistrate Judge Dan Michael, said Brown appeared to have been representing a client who was accused of not paying child support. Michael said Brown caused a spectacle in court by yelling and repeatedly challenging the juvenile court magistrate's authority.
Joe Brown is currently running to be the top prosecutor in Shelby County. Memphis is the county seat.
Officials with juvenile court and the sheriff's department don't know if Brown has a lawyer.
Judge Joe Brown

First Protest
Westboro
Westboro Baptist Church protesters demonstrating outside of a Lorde concert in Kansas City, Mo., over the weekend were met with an unusual counterprotest.
On Friday, two days after the death of Westboro's founding pastor, Fred Phelps, about 20 members of the church - holding signs that read "God Hates Sluts" among other messages - were greeted by demonstrators with banners that read, "Sorry for your loss" and "Live your life and be awesome."
The counterdemonstration was, in part, inspired by the New Zealand pop singer herself.
After the Topeka-based church announced it would protest Lorde's show because "the young lady has not been taught and will not teach young women to be sober and godly," she encouraged fans on Twitter to attend the concert dressed in rainbow colors and kiss Westboro protesters of the same sex.
Westboro
U.N. Draft
Climate Change
Global warming will disrupt food supplies, slow world economic growth and may already be causing irreversible damage to nature, according to a U.N. report due this week that will put pressure on governments to act.
A 29-page draft by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will also outline many ways to adapt to rising temperatures, more heatwaves, floods and rising seas.
Scientists and more than 100 governments will meet in Japan from March 25-29 to edit and approve the report. It will guide policies in the run-up to a U.N. summit in Paris in 2015 meant to decide a deal to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions.
The 29-page draft projects risks such as food and water shortages and extinctions of animals and plants. Crop yields would range from unchanged to a fall of up to 2 percent a decade, compared to a world without warming, it says.
Climate Change

Saudi Clerics Urge Faithful To Shun
"The 99"
Saudi Arabia's top clerics have declared an Islam-inspired cartoon series, which earned praise from US President Barack Obama, a "work of the devil" that Muslims should not watch.
The television version of superhero comic book "The 99" is being aired by Saudi-owned satellite channel MBC3, based in Dubai in the neighbouring United Arab Emirates.
But in a religious decree carried by Saudi websites on Monday, the clerics ruled the series blasphemous because the superheroes of its title are based on the 99 attributes ascribed to Allah in the Koran.
"The 99 is a work of the devil that should be condemned and forbidden in respect to Allah's names and attributes," the clerics, led by the kingdom's mufti, Abdulaziz al-Sheikh, said.
"The 99"
Anti-Fracking Activist In Court
Pennsylvania
A Pennsylvania judge could rule as early as this week on whether to modify his five-month-old injunction banning an anti-fracking activist from approaching lands leased by a Texas-based natural gas producer that effectively prohibits her from visiting the local hospital or grocery store.
Judge Kenneth Seamans suggested at a hearing on Monday in the Susquehanna County Court of Common Pleas that he was not inclined to lift the injunction against Vera Scroggins, 63, of Brackney, Pennsylvania, but he was skeptical about the 150-foot (46-meter) exclusion zone from active drilling sites and access roads requested by Cabot Oil & Gas Co.
"What is the significance of 150 feet?" Seamans asked.
Scott Michelman, a lawyer with Public Citizen Litigation Group in Washington, D.C., representing Scroggins, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has limited protest exclusion zones around abortion clinics to as little as 15 feet.
Scroggins said at a news conference after the hearing that she would not stop her activism against gas fracking, no matter what the court said. Asked if she was willing to go to jail, Scroggins said she was, if it was necessary to protect friends and family from the "contamination" of the shale gas industry.
Pennsylvania

No Longer Bank-Robbery Capital
Southern California
Southern California used to be known as the "Bank Robbery Capital of the World."
Not anymore.
The number of robberies has declined, part of a larger trend that has seen crime rates fall across the nation, the Los Angeles Times reported in Saturday's editions.
There were 212 bank robberies last year - the lowest since the 1960s - in a seven-county region overseen by the FBI's Los Angeles office.
At the height of the robbery spree in the early 1990s, the region saw 2,641 bank heists. During the worst year in 1992, more than two dozen Los Angeles banks were looted in a single day.
Southern California
Almost Unknown In Greece
Greek Yoghurt
It's a global health fad with millions of fans in Europe and the United States, and yet in Greece, many people have never heard of 'Greek yoghurt'.
Equally surprising in an age when billions are spent on marketing, the term 'Greek yoghurt' is basically a quirk of fate.
"What is known abroad as 'Greek yoghurt' is called 'straggisto' (strained yoghurt) in Greece," explained Prokopis Ploumbis, a cheesemaker in the rural outskirts of Athens. "The secret lies in the milk," he adds.
Creamy, rich in protein and low in fat, strained yoghurt made from cow's milk is increasingly prized by health-conscious consumers, and it has benefited from the growing popularity of the Mediterranean diet in the Western world.
And yet, in terms of marketing, neither the Greek state nor any Greek company had sought to stamp a patent on the product, unlike feta cheese which is now a protected EU term.
Greek Yoghurt
In Memory
Patrice Wymore Flynn
Patrice Wymore Flynn, a Hollywood actress and cattle rancher who was the widow of swashbuckling screen legend Errol Flynn, has died at her seaside home in Jamaica. She was 87.
During her film career, she worked alongside actors such as Doris Day, Kirk Douglas and Randolph Scott. She played Frank Sinatra's girlfriend in the original "Ocean's 11" in 1960.
The Kansas-born actress met her future husband when she was cast as the female lead in the 1950 western "Rocky Mountain." They spent much of their nine-year marriage in Jamaica. He died in 1959.
For decades, Wymore lived on the 2,000-acre Errol Flynn Estates cattle ranch in Jamaica.
Patrice Wymore Flynn
In Memory
Dave Brockie
Dave Brockie, who as "Oderus Urungus" fronted the alien-costumed heavy metal band GWAR during graphic and fake-blood-soaked stage shows for more than three decades, has died. He was 50.
Officers were called to Brockie's home Sunday evening and found the singer dead inside the home, Richmond police spokeswoman Dionne Waugh said Monday. Detectives don't suspect foul play at this time, and the medical examiner's office will determine cause of death, Waugh said.
The band founded in 1984 is known for its comically grotesque costumes, stage antics and vulgar lyrics. GWAR was nominated for a Grammy Award for best long-form music video in 1993 for "Phallus in Wonderland" but lost to "Diva" by Annie Lennox. It also was nominated for best metal performance for "S.F.W." in 1996 but lost to "Happiness In Slavery" by Nine Inch Nails.
GWAR released its latest album, "Battle Maximus," in September 2013 and recently toured Australia and Japan. Over the summer, the band held its 4th annual GWAR-B-Q at a small water park in Richmond and released its own canned craft beer for the occasion made by Cigar City Brewing in Tampa, Fla. The band had announced plans for its 5th annual event last week.
Brockie remained a constant in the band that has had a revolving door of members, including lead guitarist Cory Smoot, who was found dead on the band's tour bus in North Dakota in 2011. He was 34.
The state medical examiner said Smoot, who had performed since 2002 under the name "Flattus Maximus," died of "coronary artery thrombosis brought about by his pre-existing coronary artery disease." But records showed that investigators found on Smoot a $5 bill with a white powder residue, a prescription bottle holding eight Oxycodone-Acetaminophen pills, a lighter and two empty syringes.
Dave Brockie

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