Art of
The New York Times’ sloppiness when reporting on Christianity is proverbial, but perhaps none of its prior errors equals its claim this week that the apostle Saint Paul commanded Christians to kill the homosexuals among them.…
Religious illiteracy among journalists is reaching crisis levels.…
Janet Waldo, whose career in entertainment stretched from motion pictures to radio to television to the world of cartoons, died this morning. The cause was a brain tumor and her age… well, no one's quite sure how old Janet was but she sure never looked or sounded it. … She appeared in more than two dozen movies but established herself in radio, mostly notably as the star of Meet Corliss Archer. Her most memorable role in television was probably the episode of I Love Lucy in which she played Peggy, a teenager with a crush on Ricky Ricardo.
In 1962, she spoke for Judy Jetson in the animated series, The Jetsons. It was her first cartoon but it launched an entire new career in that area, mainly working for Hanna-Barbera. She was Josie in Josie and the Pussycats, Penelope Pitstop in Wacky Races and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Granny Sweet in the Precious Pup cartoons and was heard in hundreds of other roles.… And as I said, I don't know how old she was. But I can tell you that well into her nineties, she could still sound like the teenage Judy Jetson. I think I'll just assume she was always that age.
…The album is a Frankenstein's monster of sorts, stitched together from material originally written decades ago as well as new songs… And it's good!… Why are The Monkees, on the road in support of their signature show's 50th anniversary, suddenly hitmakers when they should be cashing their Social Security checks?…
Starting today, and continuing for the next month, the FAA has warned airplane pilots that GPS signals on on the West Coast, and especially over California and Nevada, may be impacted.
The reason why is not exactly clear, but as Gizmodo notes, the US military will be testing a device or devices that will potentially jam GPS signals for six hours each day.…
Days after Katie Couric apologetically admitted misrepresenting pro-gun voices via the insertion of a pause in Under the Gun, director Stephanie Soechtig took a different tack and said she stands by the pause.
In fact, Soechtig suggested the pause is only getting coverage because the NRA fixated on it.…
Katie Couric Responds to Deceptive Editing Charges in Gun Documentary
Several visitors to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this week were fooled into thinking a pair of glasses set on the floor by a 17-year-old prankster was a postmodern masterpiece.…
…McCartney also addressed the reason for the split, saying, "The business thing split us apart," referring to a new manager and new business practices for the release of "Let It Be," the band's final record together.
After the breakup, McCartney added, he wasn't sure "whether I was still going to continue in music."…
Earlier this morning, I reported on the bloody rampage at a railway station in Munich by a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar.” This is undeniably an Islamic attack. Well, not for CNN.
They have scrubbed all reference to the jihad murderers motive and mission. Despite the lack of evidence, CNN speculates that the murderer might have mental problems.…
…Paul McCartney brought his One on One Tour to Little Rock on April 30, and paid tribute to two of the women who inspired the Beatles classic “Blackbird” while he was in town.
As McCartney explained during a Nashville show in 2010, the band was moved by the American civil rights movement during the ’50s and ’60s, and McCartney composed “Blackbird” while thinking specifically of the Little Rock Nine…
…The two events may seem mostly unrelated, however, for the writer of this story, perhaps there really is a balance that must be struck. She spared Arthur Weasley, but exchanged his life for another character’s, whose end would come near the conclusion of the series.…
…The chair that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling sat in while writing the first two books of the wizardry series was sold at a New York City auction on Wednesday for $394,000…
"He was my brother, my friend. I will miss him," writes Willie Nelson in a tweet, accompanied by a photo of himself sharing a laugh with the late Merle Haggard and a link to view their iconic "Pancho and Lefty" video. Nelson and Haggard were indeed as close as family, with their musical and personal bonds dating back to long before that first collaboration, and spanning through Haggard's death today at the age of 79.…
Patty Duke, who won a best supporting actress Oscar for her performance as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker and starred as two cousins on her own sitcom, died Tuesday, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. She was 69.…
…Previously unpublished documents have revealed the scale of a plot by the media mogul William Randolph Hearst to discredit Orson Welles and destroy Citizen Kane, the 1941 film about the rise and fall of the fictional newspaper proprietor Charles Foster Kane.…
The Tick might be on his way back to television if new reports are to be believed. Amazon has ordered a pilot for the new series, with Ben Edlund back in the fold as writer and producer and Barry Josephson as executive producer.
Unfortunately actor Patrick Warburton, who played the big blue lug in the previous live action series is not going to be reprising his role, as he has a new series, Crowded, on NBC. He will be included as an executive producer, and hopefully, they can find someone to fill his big blue shoes.…
The ancient al-Qarawiyyin Library in Fez isn’t just the oldest library in Africa. Founded in 859, it’s the oldest working library in the world, holding ancient manuscripts that date as far back as 12 centuries. But modern life had taken a toll on the library, with its buildings falling into disrepair. That’s why in 2012, the Moroccan Ministry of Culture asked TED Fellow and architect Aziza Chaouni to rehabilitate the library…
A Ukrainian governor has ordered that a street named after Vladimir Lenin should be renamed “John Lennon Street.” … in the village of Kalini in Zakarpattia, Ukraine’s westernmost region…
A lock of John Lennon’s hair that was cut as he prepared for a movie role has sold at auction for $35,000.…
Two previously unseen poems by The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien have been discovered in a school magazine in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. …Tolkien is believed to have written the poems while he was a professor of Anglo-Saxon as Oxford University. Published in the 1936 annual of Our Lady’s School in Oxfordshire… first poem…is an early version of a poem Tolkien would late publish as part of the 1962 collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. …second poem, “Noel,” is a Christmas poem full of fantasy imagery.…
You just have to love the Duke of Wellington… "so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains…"
The Independent newspaper, a standard bearer for Britain’s left-wing media establishment for 29 years, has announced that it will close its print section and go “online only” from March 2016.…
On Wednesday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling that Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel transferred the rights to the character to Warner Bros. in 2001.…
Dan Hicks, a longtime Bay Area music figure and the lead singer of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, passed away Saturday following a two-year battle with cancer. He was 74. Hicks' wife CT confirmed the singer-songwriter's death on his official website. "He was true blue, one of a kind, and did it all his own way always," she wrote. "To all who loved him, know that he will live forever in the words, songs, and art that he spent his life creating. He worked so hard on each and every detail – they are all pure Dan."…
Jack Elrod Jr., a Gainesville native who spent 64 years working on the nationally syndicated outdoor comic “Mark Trail,” died Wednesday. He was 91.
Elrod began his time with the comic strip alongside its creator, fellow Gainesville native Ed Dodd, in 1950 and took over the strip in 1978 before retiring in 2014. He also won numerous conservation awards from agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Forest Service. Dodd began the comic in 1946.…
Signe Toly Anderson, a vocalist and original member of the Jefferson Airplane who left the band after its first record and was replaced by Grace Slick, has died. …Thursday at her home in Beaverton, Oregon… was 74 and had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Anderson, who survived cancer in her 30s, died on the same day that another Airplane member, Paul Kantner, died.…
Paul Kantner, founding member, guitarist and singer for Jefferson Airplane and Starship, died Thursday of multiple organ failure and septic shock. He had suffered a heart attack earlier in the week,… Kantner is survived by three children: Gareth, Alexander and China.…
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Mindful Webworks for art's own sake (and some for fun). The art and wonder of it all await your scrutiny.
Just random links galore, along with snarky comments 
probably to be regretted later.
A series of balanced and centered abstract images
TWELVE NEW, 2013 APR
Collections of drawings and cartoons, from simple & trivial to beautiful & bizarre
UPDATED 2013-MARCH