Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: The Chutpah Caucus (New York Times)
Ending stimulus has never been a problem - in fact, the historical record shows that it almost always ends too soon. And in America, at least, we have a pretty good record for behaving in a fiscally responsible fashion, with one exception - namely, the fiscal irresponsibility that prevails when, and only when, hard-line conservatives are in power.
Paul Krugman: Naive Fiscal Cynicism (New York Times)
… the story isn't "irresponsible politicians will always squander the good years"; it is "conservative Republican politicians run up debt even in good years, because they want to force cuts in social programs." Kind of a different story, isn't it?
Are university lectures doomed? (Guardian)
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has suggested that online courses herald the end of traditional lectures. Philip Hensher and John Mullan discuss the issue.
Rafael Behr: Series: The Rules (Guardian)
The essential etiquette guide to modern life.
Esther Inglis-Arkell: The scientist who decided what you'll eat and whether you'll like it (io9)
Rose Marie Pangborn has almost certainly decided what you're going to eat today. Possibly it'll be a soda. Maybe it will be potato chips. It could be some candy. Whatever it was, her work made it possible to understand what you'll taste, and how much you'll like it.
Rosanna Greenstreet: "Q&A: Caitlin Moran" (Guardian)
Q: How often do you have sex?
A: More than the kids suspect. They just think we like the TV turned up loud.
Paul Harris: Harper Lee sues agent over copyright to To Kill A Mockingbird (Guardian)
Harper Lee, the reclusive author of To Kill A Mockingbird, has sued a literary agent, claiming that he tricked the ageing writer into assigning him copyright on the classic book.
Alice Gregory: I Read Everything Janet Malcolm Ever Published (Slate)
I'm in awe of her.
Lucy Mangan: Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (1958)
Oh, the complete and utter agony of waiting for the next instalment of Tom's Midnight Garden. My beloved Mrs Pugh was reading it to us in brief, precious bursts every day before we had to put our chairs on tables ready for hometime. I therefore spent much of 1984 wishing a short, but painful, death on fellow 10-year-olds who kept delaying us by mucking about and cutting into the 25 minutes on which my day's happiness had come to depend.
Annalee Newitz: It's hard to believe, but this movie will make you love vampires again (io9)
A lot of us are suffering from vampire fatigue, with good reason. But Xan Cassavetes' cult film Kiss of the Damned will re-awaken your love for these enigmatic creatures who struggle to understand humans - and to stop eating them.
Scott Burns: "'Having Money' Isn't So Easy" (AssetBuilder)
Hold those guillotines! I'd like to say a few words to provoke your sympathy for the well-off, particularly those who "have money" and don't work for a living.
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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
Rainy morning.
Items To JFK Library
Ernest Hemingway
While most Americans have never seen Ernest Hemingway's home in Cuba where he wrote some of his most famous books, a set of 2,000 recently digitized records delivered to the United States will give scholars and the public a fuller view of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist's life.
A private U.S. foundation is working with Cuba to preserve more of Hemingway's papers, books and belongings that have been kept at his home near Havana since he died in 1961. On Monday at the U.S. Capitol, U.S. Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts and the Boston-based Finca Vigia Foundation announced that 2,000 digital copies of Hemingway papers and materials will be transferred to Boston's John F. Kennedy Library.
This is the first time anyone in the U.S. has been able to examine these items from the writer's Cuban estate, Finca Vigia. The records include passports showing Hemingway's travels and letters commenting on such works as his 1954 Nobel Prize-winning "The Old Man and the Sea." An earlier digitization effort that opened 3,000 Hemingway files in 2008 uncovered fragments of manuscripts, including an alternate ending to "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and corrected proofs of "The Old Man and the Sea."
Documents found in Cuba reveal more about Hemingway's role in World War II. He had details of daily troop movements, labeled secret, from his days as a war correspondent during the Battle of the Bulge. Also, while in Cuba in 1942 and 1943, he was authorized by the U.S. embassy in Havana to patrol the north coast of Cuba in his fishing boat, in search of German submarines.
Ernest Hemingway
Oklahoma Honors
Mary Kay Place
The Oklahoma Legislature has recognized award-winning actress and Tulsa native Mary Kay Place for her donation to a planned popular culture museum in Tulsa.
The star of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and "The Big Chill" was honored Monday with special receptions in the House and Senate lounges. She donated costumes and other items from her career.
Oklahoma Historical Society officials are lobbying the Legislature to pay for the proposed Tulsa museum. The planned 75,000-square-foot, four-story building would be dedicated to the influence of Oklahoma artists on popular culture. Supporters are also raising private donations for the project.
The Republican-controlled House has opposed any attempt to pass bond issues, including one to fund the museum's construction.
Mary Kay Place
Museum Opens In Stockholm
ABBA
You can thank ABBA for the music. And so much more.
A museum devoted to the pop superstars opening in Stockholm on Tuesday will celebrate the band's long list of hits. But it will also show off paraphernalia, including the helicopter featured on the cover of its "Arrival" album, a star-shaped guitar and dozens of glitzy costumes the Swedish band wore at the height of its 1970s fame.
Some 40 sets of the trademark shiny flares, platform boots and knitted hats are on display in the museum. But visitors can also see digital images of what they would look like in costumes, record music videos and sing such hits as "Dancing Queen" and "Mamma Mia" on a stage next to hologram images of the band members. A telephone also has been placed in a corner and ABBA members have promised to "Ring, Ring" and speak to visitors occasionally.
But the museum also shows a less glamorous, more everyday side of the history of a band that has sold 400 million records and consistently topped the charts in the decade after winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with "Waterloo." The band - made up of Bjorn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Faltskog - started out as two married couples, and continued performing after their divorces, before eventually drifting apart in the early 1980s.
ABBA
Moving To Spike
'Cops'
The "bad boys" are on the move. The Saturday night television fixture "Cops" is leaving Fox after 25 years and will be shown on the Spike network.
The cable network aimed at young male viewers said it will begin airing the action documentary series with the indelible theme song ("bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?") in September.
The move isn't really a surprise. Fox had cut down on the number of episodes ordered this season and frequently pre-empted the show for football games or ultimate fighting matches, which drew higher ratings. Fox will announce its fall season schedule next week.
Spike said it will air "Cops" in its customary 8 p.m. time slot, with two half-hour programs running back to back. The network usually airs movies on Saturday nights now, but with "Cops," it hopes to build it into a night of original programming.
'Cops'
The Ghost of Sandra Fluke
Pigboy
Rush Limbaugh denied that the advertiser boycott of his show after he called Sandra Fluke a slut would cost him anything, but a year later, it's clear that prediction wasn't true. It has, at the very least, cost him his relationship with the radio network giant Cumulus Media. Limbaugh's show is thinking of ending its contract with Cumulus at the end of the year, Politico's Dylan Byers reports. Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey has blamed Limbaugh for advertising losses, while Limbaugh thinks he's just making excuses. Either way, the Fluke controversy has clearly cost the radio host.
In an August earnings call, Dickey said the boycott had contributed to $5.5 million in losses at the top three of Cumulus's 40 major radio stations nationwide, Byers reports. In a March earnings call, Dickey said Cumulus's radio business had suffered "due to some of the issues that happened a year ago." Limbaugh's allies think that's not fair. "It's a very serious discussion, because Dickey keeps blaming Rush for his own revenue problems," a Limbaugh show source told Byers, saying Dickey's talk stations underperform compared to comparable talk stations.
There is periodic outrage over the things Limbaugh says on his show, and Limbaugh himself references it all the time. "This is gonna get me in trouble," is one of his favorite ways to introduce his political analysis. But while outrage over Limbaugh's politics hasn't hurt him, outrage over his creepiness has. In February 2012, Sandra Fluke (left) argued at a Democratic congressional hearing that it was necessary for insurance policies to cover birth control. Limbaugh, who apparently did not know how the birth control pill works, said she wanted taxpayers to finance her sex life. Fluke "testifies she's having so much sex she can't afford her own birth control pills and she agrees that Obama should provide them," Limbaugh said. He explained:
"What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps."
Pigboy
Gets 3 Months
Lauryn Hill
Grammy-winning singer Lauryn Hill stood in federal court Monday and compared her experience in the music business to the slavery her ancestors endured before a judge sentenced her to three months in prison for failing to pay about $1 million in taxes over the past decade.
Hill, who started singing with the Fugees as a teenager in the 1990s before releasing her multiplatinum 1998 album "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill," pleaded guilty last year to failing to pay taxes on more than $1.8 million earned from 2005 to 2007. Monday's sentencing also took into account unpaid state and federal taxes in 2008 and 2009 that brought the total earnings to about $2.3 million.
Despite having paid more than $900,000 in the past several days, Hill still owes interest and penalties, the U.S. attorney's office said.
In a forceful but controlled statement to the judge punctuated by occasional raps with her first on the podium, Hill described how she failed to pay taxes during a period when she'd dropped out of the music business to protect herself and her children, who now number six.
In addition to serving three months in prison, Hill must pay a $60,000 fine. After she is released from prison, she will be under parole supervision for a year, the first three months of which will be spent under home confinement.
Lauryn Hill
After The Fact Protest
Josh Ritter
Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter says he won't play a central Pennsylvania Christian college again unless it changes its policy against "homosexual behaviour."
Ritter made the announcement on Facebook hours after playing a Friday night concert at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., southwest of Harrisburg.
Messiah students and staff have to sign a "community covenant" promising to avoid homosexual behaviour and premarital sex.
Ritter calls the policy exclusionary and bigoted. He says he's donating his fee to an organization that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services.
Josh Ritter
Convicted Of Assault
Joe Francis
"Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis was found guilty Monday of misdemeanor counts of assault and false imprisonment stemming from a dispute with three women after a night out at a Hollywood club in 2011.
Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich (R-Clear Channel) said in a statement that after a two-week trial, a jury convicted the 40-year-old Francis of three counts of false imprisonment, one count of assault causing great bodily injury and one count of dissuading a witness. He faces a maximum of five years in prison. A hearing to schedule his sentencing was set for Wednesday.
Francis met the three women as they celebrated a college graduation at a the Supper Club in Hollywood on Jan. 29, 2011, took one of them by the hand as he left and took her to his limo, and the other two followed thinking Francis was giving them a ride to their car, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Francis took the women to his home and a dispute broke out when he tried to separate one from the other two, with Francis grabbing one of the women by the hair and throat and slammed her head into the floor.
After an investigation, the district attorney declined to file felony charges in the case and referred it to the city attorney, who filed the misdemeanor charges.
Joe Francis
Appeals IMDb Verdict
Huong "Junie" Hoang
Huong "Junie" Hoang, the actress who sued IMDb for revealing her real age on her IMDb Pro profile, isn't taking no for an answer.
Hoang, who lost her case against IMDb in April after a jury ruled in the online movie database's favor, has filed a notice of appeal in the case. Hoang is filing with the Ninth Circuit court of appeals.
Hoang filed suit against IMDb anonymously in October 2011, claiming that IMDb damaged her career by revealing her age after she signed up for the site's subscription service, IMDbPro. Hoang claimed that the site had obtained her age when she used her credit card to sign up for IMDbPro.
"In the entertainment industry, youth is king," the original complaint read. "If one is perceived to be 'over-the-hill,' i.e. approaching 40, it is nearly impossible for an up-and-coming actress, such as the plaintiff, to get work." (According to Hoang's IMDb profile, she is currently 41.)
Huong "Junie" Hoang
Copyright Lawsuit In VA
Bieber
Two Virginia songwriters are suing Justin Bieber and Usher for at least $10 million for copyright infringement.
Devin Copeland and Mareio Overton claim the song "Somebody to Love" contains numerous lyrical and stylistic similarities to a copyrighted song they wrote in 2008 by the same name. Copyright lawsuits are common in the music industry.
Copeland lives in Chesapeake and Overton lives in Portsmouth. The duo filed the lawsuit Thursday in federal court in Norfolk, claiming that numerous songwriters and producers conspired to copy their song.
The lawsuit says Copeland and Overton provided a copy of their song to musical promoters, who in turn provided it to representatives of Usher. The lawsuit contends that Usher's mother, who has served as his manager, held a telephone call in 2009 with Copeland saying Usher was interested in having Copeland re-record his album and go on tour. The lawsuit says Copeland never again heard from any of Usher's representatives.
The lawsuit notes Usher is seen performing a demo of "Somebody to Love" on YouTube as early as 2010. Usher ultimately decided to have Bieber record the song for his "My World 2.0" album.
Bieber
GOP Seeks Alternative
Overtime Pay
It seems like a simple proposition: give employees who work more than 40 hours a week the option of taking paid time off instead of overtime pay.
The choice already exists in the public sector. Federal and state workers can save earned time off and use it weeks or even months later to attend a parent-teacher conference, care for an elderly parent or deal with home repairs.
Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation that would extend that option to the private sector. They say that would bring more flexibility to the workplace and help workers better balance family and career.
The push is part of a broader Republican agenda undertaken by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., to expand the party's political appeal to working families. The House is expected to vote on the measure this week, but the Democratic-controlled Senate isn't likely to take it up.
But the idea Republicans promote as "pro-worker" is vigorously opposed by worker advocacy groups, labor unions and most Democrats. These opponents claim it's really a backdoor way for businesses to skimp on overtime pay.
Overtime Pay
In Memory
Mario Machado
A Los Angeles television news anchor in the 1960s and 1970s who also appeared in movies such as "Rocky III" has died. Mario Machado was 78.
His daughter, Michelle, tells the Los Angeles Times that Machado died Saturday from complications of pneumonia at a Los Angeles convalescent facility.
KCBS-TV says Machado was of Chinese and Portuguese descent and was LA's first Asian-American newscaster. Over a decades-long career, he was a newsman, producer, TV show host and soccer commentator. He worked at KCBS-TV, its predecessor and at what is now KCAL-TV.
He also played a newsman in TV shows and movies, including the "Robocop" films, "Oh, God!" and "Scarface."
Mario Machado
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