Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Gladstone: 5 Artists Who Faced Death With a Song (Cracked)
If you knew you had only months to live, what would you do? Purchase all the books by Cracked writers, or just my novel because you want to make sure to get the good one before you crap out? Maybe you'd use the time to get your affairs in order and say goodbye to loved ones.
Paul Krugman: Ideology and Investment (NY Times)
Why America won't build infrastructure.
Michael Stipe: Queerness is a state of mind brought about by understanding (Guardian)
As I understand it queerness is the obvious acceptance that the world of sexuality, identity and love isn't just black and white, or simple - it is every shade and gradation of the rainbow.
Lucy Mangen: Could you live in a tiny house? (Guardian)
With a one-storey two-room house on the market in London for £275,000, small is becoming a necessity for many looking to get on the property ladder.
Matthew Yglesias: Amazon is doing the world a favor by crushing book publishers (Vox)
Here's a little real talk about the book publishing industry - it adds almost no value, it is going to be wiped off the face of the earth soon, and writers and readers will be better off for it.
Jennifer Vineyard: Nine Actors Remember Their Famous Horror-Movie Deaths (Slate)
As part of its Horror Week, Vulture spoke to actors who each had memorable movie deaths. Two of the stars from Carrie, Ray Liotta, Rose McGowan, the Final Destination tanning-bed girls, and several others looked back on their gory demises.
M. Alice LeGrow: Girl of Steel, Boy of Ice (How Wonderful!)
So remember when I posted about having to try and win over the various boys at princess parties? Sometimes you don't have to. Sometimes they just come to you.
Nathan Birch: "5 Creepy Urban Legends That Happen to Be True (Part 8)" (Cracked)
It's that time of year again, kids! What time is that, you ask? Why, it's pants-shittin' time! Time to revisit our Halloween tradition of sharing the horrifying urban legends that we tend to think of as mere cautionary tales, designed to sway us from wandering down dark alleys or microwaving the baby, but that have actually happened to very unfortunate (and, likely, now very deceased) people.
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
took the day off.
is semi-retired.
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.
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
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Either a neighborhood ne'er-do-well is smoking some extra-fancy green-leaf medicine out in the alley or the skunk has returned.
My money is on the skunk.
Feds Identify
'Second Leaker'
The FBI has identified an employee of a federal contracting firm suspected of being the so-called "second leaker" who turned over sensitive documents about the U.S. government's terrorist watch list to a journalist closely associated with ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, according to law enforcement and intelligence sources who have been briefed on the case.
The FBI recently executed a search of the suspect's home, and federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia have opened up a criminal investigation into the matter, the sources said.
The case in question involves an Aug. 5 story published by The Intercept, an investigative website co-founded by Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who first published sensitive NSA documents obtained from Snowden.
Headlined "Barack Obama's Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers," the story cited a classified government document showing that nearly half the people on the U.S. government's master terrorist screening database had "no recognized terrorist affiliation."
The story, co-authored by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, was accompanied by a document "obtained from a source in the intelligence community" providing details about the watch-listing system that were dated as late as August 2013, months after Snowden fled to Hong Kong and revealed himself as the leaker of thousands of top secret documents from the NSA.
'Second Leaker'
Press Obama On Torture
Nobel Peace Laureates
Twelve Nobel Peace Prize laureates are urging President Barack Obama to disclose the CIA's use of torture on terror suspects since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The potential release of a long-delayed Senate report about this "dark period" of American history has brought the country to a "crossroads," the Nobel laureates wrote in an open letter to Obama posted on the website TheCommunity.com.
Obama, who won a Peace Prize himself in 2009, recognized in very direct terms in August that the United States had engaged in torture.
"The open admission by the president of the United States that the country engaged in torture is a first step in the US coming to terms with a grim chapter in its history," the Nobel laureates wrote in their letter to Obama.
"It remains to be seen whether the United States will turn a blind eye to the effects of its actions on its own people and on the rest of the world, or if it will take the necessary steps to recover the standards on which the country was founded, and to once again adhere to the international conventions it helped to bring into being."
Nobel Peace Laureates
"The World of Ice & Fire"
George R.R. Martin
George R.R. Martin knows all the signs of Boba Fett Syndrome.
Named for the minor "Star Wars" character who fans demanded to know more about, Boba Fett Syndrome is most acute for any book or film series that has reached the level of phenomenon, when minutiae becomes major. For Martin, this has meant not just the usual demands for the next "A Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy novel (don't ask, he's still working on it), but constant letters and emails asking for information on everything from dragons to Aegon Targaryen's war against the Seven Kingdoms.
Martin's new book, released this week, is "The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones," 300 pages of back story and original artwork by the some of the world's top fantasy illustrators. He agreed to the companion volume in 2006 and expected it would take just a couple of years. Naturally, it took longer. He intended to write some brief text to accompany the drawings, but ended up setting down some 300,000 words, more than enough to make his editor's "head explode."
"It was bigger than I anticipated," he said during a recent telephone interview, acknowledging that "The World of Ice & Fire" might have delayed still further the next "Ice and Fire" novel. "I start these things that I think won't take much time and they grow and grow."
George R.R. Martin
Uninterrupted 8-Minute Jam
Prince
When Prince plays Saturday Night Live on Nov. 1, he will play one extra-long segment in the middle of the show.
As you're probably aware, most of the musical guests perform two separate songs on SNL, but Prince is not like most musical guests. Instead of two performances, he'll provide the audience with eight full minutes of unadulterated, commercial-free Purple glory.
Chris Rock will host the Nov. 1 episode, his first time hosting in 18 years. Prince has been back on SNL more recently -- he played the show in 2006. For his jam session, he'll be accompanied by his band 3rdeyegirl.
Prince has been in a 2-for-1 kind of mood recently. On Sept. 30, he released two albums: ART OFFICIAL AGE, largely a solo effort, and PLECTRUMELECTRUM, recorded with 3rdeyegirl. Both went to No. 1 on the R&B and Rock charts.
Prince
Pentagon Circle Jerk
$8.3 Million A Day
The Pentagon has revised its estimate of the cost of the US air war in Iraq and Syria, saying the price tag for the campaign against the Islamic State group comes to about $8.3 million a day.
Since air strikes began on August 8, the campaign -- which has involved about 6,600 sorties by US and allied aircraft -- has cost $580 million, said Pentagon spokesman Commander Bill Urban.
The Defense Department had previously put the average daily cost of the military operation at more than $7 million a day.
But independent analysts say the Defense Department is underestimating the genuine cost of the war effort, which began in mid-June with the deployment of hundreds of US troops to secure the American embassy in Baghdad and to advise the Iraqi army.
Some former budget officials and outside experts estimate the cost of the war has already exceeded a billion dollars, and that it could rise to several billion dollars in a year's time.
$8.3 Million A Day
Focus Turns To Courts
NSA Surveillance
While Congress mulls how to curtail the NSA's collection of Americans' telephone records, impatient civil liberties groups are looking to legal challenges already underway in the courts to limit government surveillance powers.
Three appeals courts are hearing lawsuits against the bulk phone records program, creating the potential for an eventual Supreme Court review. Judges in lower courts, meanwhile, are grappling with the admissibility in terror prosecutions of evidence gained through the NSA's warrantless surveillance.
Advocates say the flurry of activity, which follows revelations last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden of once-secret intelligence collection programs, show how a post-9/11 surveillance debate once primarily hashed out among lawmakers in secret is being increasingly aired in open court - not only in New York and Washington but in places like Idaho and Colorado.
"The thing that is different about the debate right now is that the courts are much more of a factor in it," said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union. Before the Snowden disclosures, he said, courts were generally relegated to the sidelines of the discussion. Now, judges are poised to make major decisions on at least some of the matters in coming months.
NSA Surveillance
Pink Panty Shake-Down
Arizona
Armando Gutierrez was headed to Las Vegas with cash from his 2011 tax refund when he and his friends were pulled over by a sheriff's deputy.
Deputy Charley Armendariz found that the driver and another passenger had a small amount of pot and spotted nearly $5,000 in the glove box. He seized the money and arrested Gutierrez for having an outstanding warrant for fishing without a license, the police report said.
"He kept saying, 'I know you are a drug dealer and you are going to pick up the pot,'" Gutierrez recalled. "I told him, 'Dude, we are headed to Vegas.'"
Gutierrez spent about 10 hours in jail and wasn't charged with a crime arising from the traffic stop. But he didn't get his money until nine months later - and only after a series of emails were sent to the deputy, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office and others.
The episode underscores an ongoing complaint by Latinos in the Phoenix area that cash in their possession turned up missing during arrests by deputies. The complaints come from U.S. citizens like Gutierrez but are more common among immigrants who are in the country illegally.
Arizona
Two Million Barrels
BP
Around two million barrels of oil from the BP spill off the US Gulf Coast in 2010 are believed to have settled on the ocean floor, according to a study Monday.
The fate of two million of the nearly five million barrels that gushed into the open waters has remained a mystery until now, said the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.
Researchers analyzed samples collected at more than 500 locations around the Macondo Well, where the leaked oil emerged, and found it had spread widely, settling down like dirt in a bathtub.
The oil was found to have spread as far as 3,200 square kilometers (1,235 square miles) from the site, and may have gone even further, the report said.
"Our analysis suggests the oil initially was suspended in deep waters and then settled to the underlying sea floor," said the study by the University of California, Santa Barbara; the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts; and the University of California, Irvine.
BP
Shot In Israel
AP Photographer
Two photographers, including one working for The Associated Press, were struck by rubber-coated bullets fired at close range by an Israeli border policeman.
Neither photographer was seriously hurt in Sunday's incident, which came during protests that followed the funeral of a 14-year-old Palestinian boy killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers.
It was the latest incident in which journalists have been injured by tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets fired by border police, a paramilitary unit often sent in to quell violent demonstrations.
Lazar Simeonov, a Swiss freelance photographer, was also hit by the same round - a canister that discharges several rubber-coated bullets at once.
"After the incident I also tried to talk to the soldiers and asked them why they shot at us but they didn't want to hear anything and just smiled and told me to go away," Simeonov said.
AP Photographer
Ancient City Revealed
Genghis Khan
Remains of a 750-year-old city, founded by the descendents of Genghis Khan, have been unearthed along the Volga River in Russia.
Among the discoveries are two Christian temples one of which has stone carvings and fine ceramics.
The city's name was Ukek and it was founded just a few decades after Genghis Khan died in 1227. After the great conqueror's death his empire split apart and his grandson Batu Khan, who lived from 1205 to 1255, founded the Golden Horde (also called the Kipchak Khanate).The Golden Horde kingdom stretched from Eastern Europe to Central Asia and controlled many of the Silk Road trade routes that connected China to Medieval Europe.
This city of Ukek was built close to the khan's summer residence along the Volga River, something which helped it become prosperous. The name "Golden Horde" comes from the golden tent from which the khan was said to rule.
While Christians did not rule the Golden Horde, the discoveries archaeologists made show that not all the Christians were treated as slaves, and people of wealth frequented the Christian quarter of the city.
Genghis Khan
Rangers Hunt Graffiti 'Artist'
National Parks
US National Parks rangers were on Monday looking for a graffiti "artist" who has defaced some of America's most prized national landmarks, including Yosemite and Death Valley.
And in theory it shouldn't be difficult, since the miscreant -- reportedly an artist named Casey Nocket, over from New York on a tour of western US beauty spots -- posted her work on Instagram, for all to see.
Her account on the photo-sharing website has been deleted, but not before various media outlets including the San Francisco Chronicle got hold of it, publishing exchanges in which she shamelessly defends her work.
"It's art, not vandalism. I am an artist," she wrote, cited by the Denver Post.
National Parks
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