grist for the mill

With less blood shed: "As techniques, tools and attitudes change, transfusion-free surgery goes mainstream."

BRIAN DICKERSON: High court: Ineptitude isn't a crime: "Wayne County Circuit Judge Cynthia Stevens ruled that Nastal had raised a legitimate issue for jurors to consider, and a Court of Appeals panel agreed. That's when state Supreme Court justices interceded, ruling that Henderson's detectives had the right to ply their trade, even if their craft was wanting."

Giant burgers buck healthy-food trend - 01/28/05: "'Food porn,' cried the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Washington advocacy group. Jay Leno joked that the Monster Thickburger comes in a cardboard box shaped like a coffin. 'Would you like a defibrillator with that?' wrote the Chicago Tribune's restaurant critic, while describing the burger as 'unfortunately delicious.'"

USATODAY.com - Strom Thurmond's biracial daughter sheds life of secrecy: "'I wasn't in turmoil,' she says, because she accepted as a political necessity her father's refusal to acknowledge her publicly. She says the memoir, which features lengthy conversations she had with Thurmond, is partly the interpretation of her co-author, William Stadiem.
Stadiem, the author of best sellers on Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, says it was difficult for her to open up. He says he would 'cross-examine' her after interviewing her children, college classmates, friends and hundreds of people in South Carolina. Stadiem says that after the Thurmond family acknowledged her in 2003, she became less candid because she didn't want to say anything to offend her half-siblings or stepmother. 'She wants very much to be accepted by her newly discovered white family,' he adds."

Jack Johnson: "The world's first African American heavyweight champion patented a wrench (U.S.patent#1,413,121) on April the 18th, 1922. "

Wang Dang Doodle, Howlin' Wolf, Koko Taylor, Blues Lyrics:

"When the fish scent fill the air, there'll be snuff juice everywhere
We gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long
All night long, All night long etc."

Real-life Waterworld: "Theirs is a real-life Waterworld, from birth to death. Many children in Suang Pukul have never walked upon land. Instead, they make playgrounds among the tangle of wood-slat bridges that run helter skelter through the ramshackle communities miles from Sitangkai, the nearest landfall."

Voice/Vision: Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive: "Since the project began in 1981, Dr. Sid Bolkosky, Professor of History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, has interviewed nearly 180 survivors of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. These testimonies are recorded in over 200 audio and video taped oral interviews for over 650 hours of recorded histories. Once transcribed, interviews are entered into the online catalog of the Mardigian Library and OCLC, the Online Computer Library Catalog. All material is copyrighted. "

Group ditches plans for KKK robe: "'All they're doing is driving up the price,' "

OregonLive.com: Unnecessary Epidemic

Amazon.com: Books: Shake Hands with the Devil : The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

Yahoo! News - D.A. Confronts 'Jury Pool From Hell': "Another would-be juror said he had had alcohol problems and was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer. 'I should have known something was up,' he said. 'She had all her teeth.' "

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson | PBS

Harvard chief defends talk on women, science | CNET News.com: "He discussed several factors that could help explain the underrepresentation of women. The first factor, he said, according to several participants, was that top positions on university math and engineering faculties require extraordinary commitments of time and energy, with many professors working 80-hour weeks in the same punishing schedules pursued by top lawyers, bankers and business executives. Few married women with children are willing to accept such sacrifices, he said. "

Gloria (1980) - "Plot Summary: Jack Dawn and his family are eliminated by the mob, because he was their accountant and was feeding information to the FBI. However his six-year-old Puerto Rican son, Phil, escapes with Gloria, a neighbor who was a former girlfriend of one of the gangsters. Gloria and Phil are chased throughout New York City because Phil has a black book containing the accounts of the mob."

Robe auction date is moved: "Outrage swept through Howell and Livingston County last week when Gray hung the KKK robe prominently in his store window. Residents called to complain and city leaders asked Gray to take it down.
He obliged, but he also accepted money from people who wanted to take pictures with the robe. Gray said the money would be donated to a local charity."

Sexism in rap sparks black magazine to say, 'Enough!' | csmonitor.com: "Taking on a multibillion-dollar industry that accounts for more music sales than pop and rock - and exerts a cultural influence that extends far beyond the African-American community - is a monumental undertaking, even for a publication with a circulation of over 1.6 million. While few expect Essence to turn the tide, it's significant that the preeminent magazine for African-American women believes that the degree of sexism in rap is no longer tenable."

DESIREE COOPER: Klan robe is reminder of racism's evil: "But he may have underestimated what the symbol of hatred still means to many people of Howell, who resent being labeled racists. Until his death in 1992, the former grand dragon of the Michigan Ku Klux Klan, Robert Miles, lived on a farm in Cohoctah Township just outside of Howell. Miles spent six years in federal prison for planning the bombing of 10 empty school buses during Pontiac's court-ordered desegregation in the 1970s, and as a conspirator in the tarring and feathering of a Willow Run High School principal. The crimes, along with cross burnings and Klan meetings, became synonymous with the city of Howell."

Paper Apologizes for Civil Rights Coverage (washingtonpost.com): "Robert Horine, a Leader reporter starting in 1958, recalled going to one of the first sit-ins.

'I talked to several of the people seated at the counter, and I had a story for Sunday's paper,' he told the newspaper. 'When I got back, the editors said, 'Absolutely not.' '"

Chicago Magazine: "The saga of Bob Greene, now 55, is a complex tale of success, failure, mystery, and tragedy. As a young graduate of Northwestern University, he quickly made a name as a pioneering journalist?finding fresh angles, exploring pop culture, injecting himself into a story. His early work was celebrated by masters such as Jimmy Breslin and Tom Wolfe. Over the years, though, the gaze of the wunderkind went from forward to backward, and the middle-aged writer dwelt in nostalgia and sentimentality, concentrating on the glories of an America?or an imagined America?several generations removed. Throughout, he had a talent for tapping his own life and musings, even the most mundane daily experiences, and shaping them into pointed observations and lessons. Critics found much of this to be bunk, but readers responded warmly.
?What was Bob Greene?s talent?? says Jim Squires, the Tribune?s editor from 1981 to 1989. ?He arrived at a point of view on common, everyday issues, and he expressed it in a way that obviously a huge bunch of readers in the country would look at and say, ?I agree with that. That?s exactly the way I feel.? And that is a talent. That is a great talent.?
The trouble was, in public comments Greene made it clear that sometimes he did not believe what he wrote. He was just finding an angle that would make a good column?draw attention, promote his career. He mixed candor and calculation so shrewdly that, looking back over his work, it is impossible to tell when he is being honest and when he is just reaching for effect. But the devastating events that have unfolded are beyond questions about "

The Observer | Review | Kim Cattrall: 'A lot of guys my age are terrified of me': "Are women too self-critical? 'Well we come by it honestly - there's so much pressure in the commercial world on what we're supposed to buy and how to look and what we're supposed to say.' What about ageing? 'You've just got to say, 'Fuck it!' It's not going to change. But you get more at home in your skin about the way your body changes. You have to surrender to it, but fight as hard as you can.' I say it sounds like the worst sort of Cosmo cover line and Cattrall hoots."

HoustonChronicle.com - Casey: Yates wins: Shrink was delusional: "There's a warning that more babies will lead to more psychotic episodes, a further decline after the death of her father, another hospitalization, catatonic states, a suicide watch, a psychiatrist's recommendation upon her release that she not be left alone with her children, her scratching of her head so much that she caused bald spots, her failure to eat, a recommendation for electroconvulsive therapy." This is why, in my opinion, her husband ought to be in jail. It's effectively spousal abuse. - Barry

The 'Other America' May Be Coming Back (washingtonpost.com): "There's no great mystery to unravel here. Above all, what changed the lives of America's senior citizens were the significant increases in Social Security benefits enacted in the 1960s and '70s, and the indexing of those benefits to average wage growth. But since the Bush administration is reportedly soon to propose ending that indexing, and replacing it with a different formula that would greatly reduce benefits, it's worth taking a moment to look back at senior poverty as it existed in the year of John F. Kennedy's election as president."

Meditation Gives Brain a Charge, Study Finds (washingtonpost.com)

Do You Speak American . Books & Videos | PBS

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column: "Wave of Change
How to Build a Global Internet Tsunami Warning System in a Month

By Robert X. Cringely"

BlogAid: "You can help the victims of this terrible natural disaster by pledging the proceeds of any advertising or affiliate schemes you have on your site for the month of January to your country's Tsunami Earthquake appeal."

Long Pig (Harpers.org)

"Led by the deacon, they fell upon the enemy with wild yells. It was a lively fight; but after a time the church-militant prevailed, and smote the pagans hip and thigh under the cocoa-nut trees.

Then, alas! came a sad relapse. The rapture of battle was still burning within the victors; they were atrociously hungry after the long sermon, and it was dinner-time anyway. What did these reckless savages do but roast their enemies on a fire of drift-wood? Then they spread fresh ti leaves on the very steps of the church door; the senior deacon, forgetting nothing, had prepared a good sauce with shrimps and salt-water. This, I should explain, is the correct thing in the cannibal islands for “long pig,” as the natives call their favorite article of food, while for the farm animal, which they distinguish simply as “short pig,” a plain sauce of green sea-moss with limpets is considered quite sufficient. Almost before they knew what they were doing these forgetful pagans had devoured all of their enemies except a few very tough old warriors, whom they reserved to put into the fish-ponds; for your Feejeean of the good old times well understood Lucullus's methods of fattening lampreys."

Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism