from AP via The NY Daily News

‘Gomer Pyle’ actor Jim Nabors marries longtime partner, Stan Cadwallader, in Seattle

82-year-old actor had been dating former Honolulu firefighter since 1975

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HONOLULU — Jim Nabors, the actor best known for playing Gomer Pyle on TV in the 1960s, has married his longtime male partner.

Hawaii News Now reports Nabors, 82, and Stan Cadwallader, 64, traveled from their Honolulu home to Seattle to be married Jan. 15. Gay marriage became legal in Washington state last month.

The couple met in 1975 when Cadwallader was a Honolulu firefighter.

“I’m 82 and he’s in his 60s and so we’ve been together for 38 years and I’m not ashamed of people knowing, it’s just that it was such a personal thing, I didn’t tell anybody,” Nabors said. “I’m very happy that I’ve had a partner of 38 years and I feel very blessed. And, what can I tell you, I’m just very happy.”

[ click to continue reading at NYDailyNews.com ]

from The Times UK

Nursing home defends prostitutes’ visits

The former manager of a nursing home has been forced to defend the level of “holistic care” offered to her patients after East Sussex council suggested that allowing prostitutes to visit her residents was inappropriate.

Residents of Chaseley nursing home, in Eastbourne, referred to them as “special visits”. The home’s care workers would take the visitors to a resident’s room. They then put a “special red sock” on the door and checked on them every 15 minutes.

The home, which mainly cares for disabled ex-servicemen, has long had a policy of facilitating sex workers. However a spokesman for the council said that it was unaware of the practice and was investigating because it “has the potential to place vulnerable … residents at risk of exploitation and abuse.”

[ click to continue reading at The Times ]

from Publishing Perspectives

How James Frey’s “IP Factory” is Re-imagining Book Packaging

By Rachel Aydt

The multi-media packaging business Full Fathom Five, the brainchild of James Frey — who until Lance Armstrong appears on TV today, was likely Oprah’s most famous confessor  — has refined a business formula that marries talented writers, filmmakers, television producers, video game makers and toy designers, into one big collaborative “IP Factory.”

Frey explains that the formula isn’t as Draconian as it’s been made out to be in the press since the company’s inception. In the past, their work for hire contracts were publicly vilified, most extremely by a writer in New York Magazine in 2010 (who had a project in the works with Full Fathom that went sour). The article claimed that Frey’s company was a “Fiction Factory” employing hungry young talent, plucked straight from enviable MFA programs, at the pay rate of (wait for it) $250 per book. “The fact that we work exclusively with graduate students is a myth,” says Frey. “It’s not true. We work with New York Times bestselling writers as well as talented up and comers.” Contractually their pay scale isn’t standardized, he explains — nor could it be — because their products are spread so far across the multimedia map, not just in terms of medium, but also in terms of audience.

“Many book packagers focus on one demographic, like Alloy, who makes books and products exclusively for teenaged girls,” he says. Alloy, of course, is the force behind the adolescent girl phenoms Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, and the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants franchises. “And I have a lot of admiration for what they’ve done. We’ve done some things for that age group, but I like to think that we’re ‘demographic agnostic.’ We’re not working with a specific demographic. If we have a great idea for a new population, we’ll try it out.” The collaborative piece of his business lies in deciding how to best roll out an idea. “If there’s a great idea, our job is to figure out what to do with it.”

[ click to continue reading at Publishing Perspectives ]

from Vanity Fair

THE IMPOSSIBLE INTERVIEW: Nikki Minaj speaks with Thomas L. Friedman

[ click to view at readable size ]

from spinner

Dean Ween, Les Claypool Shooting Fishing Show With ‘South Park’ Creators

by Cameron Matthews

Since the breakup of weirdo rock group Ween, Melchiondo has been fishing the waters off the Jersey Shore.

He has a charter boat and takes fans and fishing fiends out to grab a catch all the time. But Hurricane Sandy screwed up his fall scheduling, so Dean’s been sailing through the bitter cold of the Northeast winter.

In a recent interview with NJ.com, the guitarist revealed that he’ll be taping a pilot for a cable fishing show, starring himself and Les Claypool of Primus. The producers? “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

[ click to read full article at spinner ]

from The New York Times

Young Publisher Takes Marx Into the Mainstream

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER

When Bhaskar Sunkara was growing up in Westchester County, he likes to say, he dreamed of being a professional basketball player.

But the height gods, among others, didn’t smile in his favor. So in 2009, during a medical leave from his sophomore year at George Washington University, Mr. Sunkara turned to Plan B: creating a magazine dedicated to bringing jargon-free neo-Marxist thinking to the masses.

“I had no right to start a print publication when I was 21,” he said in an interview in a cafe near his apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. “Looking back, I see it as a moment of creative ignorance. You have to have enough intelligence to execute something like this but be stupid enough to think it could be successful.”

The resulting magazine, Jacobin, whose ninth issue just landed, has certainly been an improbable hit, buoyed by the radical stirrings of the Occupy movement and a bitingly satirical but serious-minded style. Since its debut in September 2010 it has attracted nearly 2,000 print and digital subscribers, some 250,000 Web hits a month, regular name-checks from prominent bloggers, and book deals from two New York publishers.

[ click to read full article at NYTimes.com ]

from AP via AZCentral.com

Arizona motorists warned about burros on roadway

Associated Press

The Mohave Valley Daily News reports (http://bit.ly/WjDw7n) that there have been more than half a dozen recent calls of burros on or near Bullhead Parkway.

The calls include an accident last month that left a motorcyclist injured and an animal dead and a late-night accident this past week that left one of the stray burros with a leg injury after being struck by a car.

[ click to continue reading at AZCentral.com ]

from Crain’s New York

Chain pain on Lower East Side

Locals take big gulp over opening of 7-Eleven on Avenue A.

Lower East Siders have found something they fear and loathe even more than banks and Starbucks—7-Eleven—and they’re not going to take it anymore. The global convenience-store giant, with its garish orange-and-green logo and blinding batteries of fluorescent lights, has already opened four locations in the neighborhood. Another is scheduled to open this spring at Avenue A and East 11th Street.

In response, dozens of community activists and residents gathered last week at Father’s Heart Ministries church just up the street to discuss ways to stop the chain before time runs out.

“It’s a total invasion of the soul snatchers,” warned Bob Holman, proprietor of the recently closed Bowery Poetry Club, who showed up at the meeting sporting yards of heavy steel chains wrapped around his torso. “It’s the blandification of America.”

The world’s largest convenience store operator, franchisor and licensor is in the midst of an aggressive expansion in Manhattan. In the past two years, the Dallas-based chain, famous for its Big Gulps and Slurpees, has quadrupled its store count in the borough to 32, from eight previously. Another 20 are planned for this year.

Locals charge that 7-Eleven is tearing the fabric of the Lower East Side, saying that the stores stick out like visitors from another planet. Others complain that the chain is taking business away from small grocers, newsstands and bodegas, and they are fighting back with a barrage of boycotts, bumper stickers and marches.

[ click to continue reading at Crain’s ]

from Forbes

Atari US Files for Bankruptcy, Sells Assets, Logo

In an effort to untangle itself from its parent company, the France-based Atari SA, Atari US has filed for bankruptcy and will sell all its assets in the next three to four months. They have already locked down a  debtor-in-possession investment of $5.25M from investment advisory Tenor Capital Management and hope the move will land them some fresh business.

What assets are on the auction block? That would be classic franchises like Pong, Centipede, Missile Command and Asteroids, so Hollywood get out your checkbooks for those film rights. Wait, you’re telling me there’s already an Asteroids movie in development? Of course there is.

[ click to continue reading at Forbes ]

from CarBuzz

1966 Batmobile Sold for $4.62 Million

Sought after by fans for decades, the owner and builder of the original 1966 Batmobile finally put it up for auction.

It’s 19-feet long and two guys wearing cheap spandex costumes drove it in the classic “Batman” live action TV series that ran from 1966-1968. If you haven’t guessed by now, we’re referring to the original Batmobile that was built by Hollywood custom car builder George Barris almost five decades ago. Many replica versions have been built and sold over the years but Barris still clung to the original despite many lucrative offers to buy it. But at age 88 he decided to put it up for auction at this year’s Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Barris had been the car’s sole owner for all these years but now it belongs to someone else after they paid a shocking $4,620,000. During the auction Barris was on stage as the bids came in for what used to be a 1955 Lincoln Futura concept. Way back when, Barris was given just three weeks by the TV studio to build the Batmobile. Within that time, he managed to fabricate those distinct bat-shaped body pieces and many other bits that made the car a cultural icon.

[ click to continue reading at CarBuzz.com ]

from The Atlantic

How Forks Gave Us Overbites and Pots Saved the Toothless

Historical changes in the ways we cook and eat have dramatically altered public health.

Bee Wilson is the author of Consider the Fork, which documents the evolution of cooking and eating technology. In the book, Wilson describes many unintended consequences of new methods of or materials for cooking and eating. Here she talks about some of the health ramifications of such changes.

you write in the “Pots and Pans” chapter how until the 18th century most families had one big pot, a cauldron, that had a sort of palimpsest porridge in it — they just kept adding new things to cook along with whatever was left over from the day before. So a lot of what people ate was soft. Were there dental changes once other ways of cooking became readily available?

The big dental change that was seen with pots happened with the initial adoption of pottery for cooking around 10, 000 years ago. Until the cooking pot was invented, no one who had lost all their teeth would survive into adulthood. There are no traces of edentulous — toothless — skeletons in any population without pottery. Pots made it possible for the first time to cook nourishing stew-like meals that required no chewing but could, rather, be drunk. So having teeth was no longer necessary for survival. This is another clear example of how utensils have acted as a kind of robotic extension of the human body.

[ click to eat the entire word feast at The Atlantic ]

from The Guardian

Kim Dotcom: the internet cult hero spoiling for a fight with US authorities

German-born former hacker says his eyes have been opened to US tactics after his Megaupload site was shut down last year

by Toby Manhire in Auckland

[VIDEO: Kim on Mega, Hollywood, the internet and copyright enforcement]

In massive, swaggering capital letters, “Mega” stretches across the grassy slope in front of Dotcom Mansion. A huddle of electricians and carpenters are removing the wooden stencils and wiring in the fluorescent tubes. They are up to G. All around the vast grounds of Kim Dotcom‘s luxury home just north of Auckland, New Zealand, gardeners and technicians are busy, like Oompa-Loompas at the Chocolate Factory, setting up for the big night, overlooked by life-size inflatable giraffes and hippos.

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian ]

Thanks Interplanet Janet & Schoolhouse Rock for 40 years of  Informative Fun

[ click to read more at The Washington Post ]

from FLAVORWIRE

Literary Graffiti From All Over the World

Photo Credit: Emily Babb

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

[ click to view full slideshow at FLAVORWIRE ]

from BETABEAT

Robots Will Soon Fulfill All Your Sexy Nurse Fantasies

By Jessica Roy

Ah, the medical professional fantasy: pretty mundane fodder for a generation reared on porn, but still immensely popular. Bedding a nurse is the number one fantasy among men, in case you haven’t been to a Halloween party in the past 25 years.

Now, some futurists are predicting that robots will have a dual function in our impending utopian society: not only will they care for us when we’re sick, but they’ll also satisfy our sexual fantasies in the process.

Transhumanity.net predicts that medical robots will eventually come equipped with a program that allows them to use sex as a perk to help them stand out in the crowded marketplace. Why hire a doctor robot when you can hire a doctor robot with BOOBS?

Imagine this, dudes. Your doctor who attends to your rectal health is a curvy she’bot who straps you face down with your legs spread for a prostrate exam and colonoscopy. After freshening the air with lime spray from her nipples, she divinely massages you, before gliding her slippery 18-inch techno-tongue into your anus.

The nurse would eventually bring the patient to orgasm–mostly for medical reasons, of course!

[ click to continue reading at BETABEAT.com ]

Michael Keaton’s Books on WTF w/Marc Maron

[ click to hear the whole interview at WTF ]

from Smithsonian

The Murky History of Foosball

How did the tabletop game get from parlor halls in 19th-century Europe to the basements of American homes?
By Derek Workman

A group of young Parisians playing foosball at a cafe in 1958. (Rue des Archives / The Granger Collection, New York)

In the best tradition of skulduggery, claim and counterclaim, foosball (or table football), that simple game of bouncing little wooden soccer players back and forth on springy metal bars across something that looks like a mini pool table, has the roots of its conception mired in confusion.

Some say that in a sort of spontaneous combustion of ideas, the game erupted in various parts of Europe simultaneously sometime during the 1880s or ’90s as a parlor game. Others say that it was the brainchild of Lucien Rosengart, a dabbler in the inventive and engineering arts who had various patents, including ones for railway parts, bicycle parts, the seat belt and a rocket that allowed artillery shells to be exploded while airborne. Rosengart claimed to have come up with the game toward the end of the 1930s to keep his grandchildren entertained during the winter. Eventually his children’s pastime appeared in cafés throughout France, where the miniature players wore red, white and blue to remind everyone that this was the result of the inventiveness of the superior French mind.

There again, though, Alexandre de Finesterre has many followers, who claim that he came up with the idea , being bored in a hospital in the Basque region of Spain with injuries sustained from a bombing raid during the Spanish Civil War.

[ click to continue reading at Smithsonian ]

[ visit THE ACT OF KILLING Official Website ]

from The Morning News

Right Here Waiting

by Edward McClelland

After frequenting a local haunt where nobody knows his name, a Chicago writer makes new friends, rips on Richard Marx online, and then suddenly lands a real live celebrity musician at their door.

“Wow,” I told my sister. “Richard Marx is blowing up my inbox.”

I called my editor.

“I’ve been getting emails from some guy who says he’s Richard Marx,” I said. “I think it’s an impostor. The only thing that makes me think it might really be Richard Marx is that it’s from an AOL account.”

The next day, my editor told me he’d traced the emails to a MySpace account with the same tag.

Except the emails hadn’t been coming from a guy with a MySpace account. They were actually from Richard Marx. How do I know? Because I received this tweet from Richard Marx’s verified Twitter account[.]

“Richard Marx is totally calling me out on Twitter,” I told my editor.

“Just ignore it,” he said. “It’ll blow over.”

“I’m not going to ignore it. I’m not going to look wimpier than the guy who wrote ‘Right Here Waiting.’ He says he’ll meet me anywhere in the city.”

So I emailed Richard Marx, inviting him to meet me at seven the next evening at the Lighthouse. Then I went down to the bar to prepare the boys for Richard Marx’s arrival. I wanted a posse behind me when he walked in the door. Vinko and Paddy, our token Irishman, were sitting at the end of the bar, next to the beer cooler. We looked up Richard Marx on Billy the bartender’s laptop and starting slagging him.

“You should send him an email and tell him you’ll be right here waiting for him,” Paddy suggested.

I got to the Lighthouse an hour early. By 6:45, I had half a dozen guys behind me: Vinko, Paddy, Billy, Aquaman, Brian, and Mike. Nobody wanted to miss Richard Marx. By 7:15, Billy had left the bar, convinced Richard Marx wasn’t going to show.

Then someone spotted a black Jaguar rolling down Chase Ave. I looked out the window. Billy was walking back up the street, alongside Richard Marx. I had steeled myself for this confrontation by drinking an entire pint of light beer. Richard Marx didn’t get two steps past the door before a guy at the bar stuck out his hand and said, “Hey Richard, good to see you.” I waved to let Richard Marx know I was the guy who had called him shameless.

[ click to read the whole piece at TheMorningNews.org ]

This is awful…

from COLLAPSE BOARD

Secret Memo Regarding Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’ Reissue Leaked

By the Collapse Board editors

The following document was obtained by Collapse Board from an unnamed source. It is currently being distributed to all major music publications and websites. Despite the threat of lawsuit, we have decided to publish this document verbatim. The author of the document is unknown.

(starts)

This memo is being sent out to prepare everyone for the major musical event of 2013. I am speaking, of course, about the 20th anniversary reissue of In Utero by Nirvana…. To understand why this is the case we must look once more to The Beatles. The sheer amount of Beatles literature (and its continued market success) should tell us all one very important fact: people not only like to read the same story over and over again, they demand it. Our job is to retell the story, to reinforce the legends, to emphasise the inflexibility of the narrative. So, given these facts I’ve prepared some bulletin points that focus on what each review should highlight:

1. Give some brief background details. This is called SETTING THE SCENE. The Nirvana/Kurt Cobain legend must reinforce again and again the idea of the reluctant star, the uncomfortable voice of a generation. I recommend the use of the term “thrust into the limelight”. It functions beautifully for our purposes…..

Kurt Cobain: Reluctant star. Pressure. Compromise. Depression. Heroin. Death. It’s that simple. Don’t feel like you are selling yourself short by sticking to these guidelines. Instead know that you are performing a public service. You are providing comfort and certitude in a world of confusion. You are giving people something to believe in. You are helping to make the art of Kurt Cobain immortal. Expect more high profile media events along the lines of the Nirvana/McCartney collaboration before long and, with any luck, we can anticipate a lucrative last quarter in 2013. One last thing: is 2014 too early for a 15th anniversary of the first White Stripes album, or should we wait for the 20th anniversary? I look forward to your feedback. Let’s make the myths.

[ read whole hilarious post at COLLAPSEBOARD.com ]

from The Guardian

Sol Yurick obituary

American novelist best known for The Warriors, a tale of gangs and street violence in New York

by Eric Homberger

[ click to peruse Rick’s Twitter ]

from ALTERED DIMENSIONS

Dead bodies abound on Mount Everest

It is estimated that over 200 people have died in their attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The causes of their death vary as widely as the weather at Mount Everest’s peak. At the summit, winds can reach hurricane strength literally blowing the climber off the mountain. Oxygen levels leave the climbers gasping for breath and their oxygen deprived brains leave them unable to make rational decisions. Some climbers stop for a brief rest only to slowly drift into sleep, never to wake up. All dangers aside, ask any climber who has beaten the mountain and reached the 29,000 foot summit and they will tell you the most memorable, and disturbing, part of their climb were the many perfectly preserved bodies that they passed on their way to the top.

[In the photo above,] the body of David Sharp still sits in a cave at the top of Mount Everest.  David attempted the climb in 2005 and near the top, stopped in this cave to rest.  His body eventually froze in place rendering him unable to move.  Over 30 climbers passed by him as he sat freezing to death.  Some heard faint moans and realized he was still alive.  They stopped and spoke with him.  He was able to identify himself but was unable to move.  Brave climbers moved him into the Sun in an attempt to thaw him but eventually, realizing David would be unable to move, were forced to leave him to die.  His body still sits in the cave and is used as a guide point for other climbers nearing the summit.

[ click to read the entire creepy tale at ALTEREDDIMENSIONS.net ]

from The Daily Mail

How college students think they are more special than EVER: Study reveals rocketing sense of entitlement on U.S. campuses

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Books aside, if you asked a college freshman today who the Greatest Generation is, they might respond by pointing in a mirror.

Young people’s unprecedented level of self-infatuation was revealed in a new analysis of the American Freshman Survey, which has been asking students to rate themselves compared to their peers since 1966. 

Roughly 9 million young people have taken the survey over the last 47 years.

Pyschologist Jean Twenge and her colleagues compiled the data and found that over the last four decades there’s been a dramatic rise in the number of students who describe themselves as being ‘above average’ in the areas of academic ability, drive to achieve, mathematical ability, and self-confidence.

But in appraising the traits that are considered less invidualistic – co-operativeness, understanding others, and spirituality – the numbers either stayed at slightly decreased over the same period.

Researchers also found a disconnect between the student’s opinions of themselves and actual ability.

[ click to continue reading at The Daily Mail ]

from BuzzFeed

The Essential Guide To Dim Sum

by Carolyn Phillips

In the beginning, dim sum was a verb that merely meant “to eat a little something.” Cantonese dim sum culture began in tearooms in the latter half of the nineteenth century in the city of Guangzou, possibly because of the recent ban of opium dens. It spread and gained popularity—especially in nearby Hong Kong.

The sort of dim sum restaurant we’re familiar with today in the West originated in Hong Kong in the mid-1950s. These Hong Kong parlors had areas for banquets and even mah-jongg games, and carts pushed by “aunties” (a’sam).

Know exactly how to order thanks to this breakdown of 24 dishes, including photos and Chinese pronunciation….

[ click to study yummy Dim Sum Field Guide @ BuzzFeed ]

from CBS New York

American Kennel Club Says Dognapping Cases Are Up By Almost 70 Percent

Experts: Most Important Step To Keeping Pets Safe Is Microchipping

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Dogs are being stolen out of cars, yards, off sidewalks and even out of shelters at an alarming rate, according to the American Kennel Club.

“It only takes a minute for a theft to occur,” American Kennel Club spokeswoman Lisa Peterson told CBS 2′s Dave Carlin on Friday.

Making any pet owner think twice is surveillance video from last week that showed “Marley” the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel being menaced by a stranger, who picked up the frightened dog and walked off with him, leaving 7-year-old Mia Bendrat heartbroken the day before Christmas.

“You knew that was somebody’s dog and it was Christmas Eve. I mean really?” Bendrat said.

Marley was sold to a woman in Greenwich Village, who thought the situation was fishy.

Marley was checked for a microchip and Mia and her best friend were reunited.

[ click to continue reading at CBS New York ]

from WIRED

Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs

• BY KEVIN KELLY

Photo: Peter Yang

Imagine that 7 out of 10 working Americans got fired tomorrow. What would they all do?

It’s hard to believe you’d have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force. But that—in slow motion—is what the industrial revolution did to the workforce of the early 19th century. Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines. But the displaced workers did not sit idle. Instead, automation created hundreds of millions of jobs in entirely new fields. Those who once farmed were now manning the legions of factories that churned out farm equipment, cars, and other industrial products. Since then, wave upon wave of new occupations have arrived—appliance repairman, offset printer, food chemist, photographer, web designer—each building on previous automation. Today, the vast majority of us are doing jobs that no farmer from the 1800s could have imagined.

[ click to continue reading at WIRED.com ]

^:)

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