Having never served on a jury, I can't say for sure what is and isn't typical, but this certainly seems unusual: Jurors in the trial of Mark Strong, the alleged co-conspirator/partner of the alleged Zumba madam Alexis Wright, were shown eight videos on Thursday, including one 45-minute video of a woman identified as Wright having sex with a client.
You may have heard by now that Dennis Rodman, professional basketball's version of a beleaguered shock jock, is on a diplomatic mission to nightmarish dictatorship North Korea, accompanied by a team from Vice and the Harlem Globetrotters. It's a motley crew to be sure, but based on the fact that Rodman and Vice are now calling themselves "friends" to the famine- and gulag-ridden Asian nation, things seem to be going quite well. One Vice staffer, Jason Mojica, even tweeted about being allowed into North Korean supreme leader King Jong-un's own home to be feted with food and booze:
After 16 godawful, Jägermeister-fueled years, the Girls Gone Wild amateur porn franchise is filing for bankruptcy. The Wall Street Journal reports that company founder Joe Francis manager Chris Dale put GGW Brands LLC and other companies under the Girls Gone Wild umbrella into Chapter 11 protection yesterday to prevent the Wynn Las Vegas Casino and Resort from acquiring them in a multimillion dollar lawsuit:
In an article on The New Republic today, journalist Marin Cogan details some of the sexual advances female reporters in Washington, D.C., must field from even the most rainmaking of our elected officials. Nodding toward a House of Cards episode that broached the subject of fraught journalist-source flirtations, Cogan writes that colleagues of hers have been hit on by fundraisers, lobbyists, think-tank brains, and beyond, some of whom were wearing wedding rings whilst trying to get laid.
A couple of times a week I walk by the Yale Drama School. It's a strange experience because my dream through college was to go there and become a playwright, a cross between Clifford Odets and George S. Kaufman. When the socialist revolution came I wanted to be the one writing snappy one-liners to support it. Then I gave up that dream and decided to become Herbert Croly, the early New Republic editor, or John Reed, the radical who went to Harvard and then had a love affair with Diane Keaton (at least in "Reds").
A 2009 survey showed that the median white family in American had twenty times more wealth than the median black family. How can this be, so many years after the civil rights movement? The answer, according to a new study: black people have been systematically screwed by home ownership.
Wal-Mart is widely despised by left wingers for reasons both philosophical and aesthetic. The company, in turn—though sometimes pushing for "green" improvements and other traditionally liberal notions that will help the Wal-Mart bottom line—is a heavy Republican donor and notorious union-buster, and generally behaves in the corporatist, center-right way that one would expect of one of America's largest corporations.
Exciting month for Anheuser-Busch. First, they convinced Marcus Mumford-collaborator Justin Timberlake to become the "creative director" for Bud Light Platinum. And now the company is being sued by beer drinkers in three different states for allegedly watering down its beer. The lawsuits, filed in Pennsylvania, California and New Jersey, accuse Anheuser-Busch of watering down 11 of their beers, including Budweiser, the aforementioned Bud Light Platinum, and Black Crown; each lawsuit is seeking damages of over over $5 million.
Last Friday, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer pissed everyone off when she banned her employees from working remotely. Yahoo's working mothers were particularly disgruntled by this change of policy, especially because they don't think that Mayer understands their needs (even though Mayer is a working mother herself).
C. Everett Koop, who died today in New Hampshire, did a lot throughout the course of his 96 years, including play football at Dartmouth, help put into motion the war against second-hand smoke, and launch an ultimately failed medical website, DrKoop.com, in the primeval internet age of 1997. But Koop, who also moonlighted as a spokesperson for the Life Alert company, will perhaps be most remembered for introducing millions of Americans to—and destroying stereotypes about—AIDS, the deadly disease that started to rear its head in America the year before he took office in 1982.
New veterans—those who left US military service recently—have higher unemployment rates than both older veterans and civilians, according to a new research paper from the Chicago Fed. Even taking into account the age and education level of new veterans, "neither demographics nor simply being a new veteran by themselves can account for the rise in relative unemployment rates for new veterans," the paper says. "Instead, our results suggest that prolonged deployments overseas account for much of the difference in unemployment rates between recent veterans and nonveterans."
When Paperman won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short early in the Oscar telecast, the film's director John Kahrs (pictured above) gave a lovely, brief speech, giving a special thanks to his wife, who was shown crying in the audience. A great Oscar moment. The film's producer, Christina Reed, reacted in a similarly enthusiastic, if slightly more mischievous manner; she threw three or four paper airplanes covered in kisses – much like those featured in the film — from the Dolby Theater's mezzanine.
One of the small and tidy comforts in life is the knowledge that when the latest winter storm sweeps through, trapping you inside your home for days on end, you can at least hunker down with some delivery and ride out the worst of it. And the pizza delivery drivers...they're fine, right? They've got those special pizza cars, or something. They wouldn't be out driving in weather like this if they couldn't handle it. Just ask this nice lady who owns a pizza place in Iowa:
Forbes released its list of America's Most Miserable Cities this week, with appearances from the usual smattering of former manufacturing towns in the Rust Belt, bankrupt municipalities in central California, and burned-out coastal shells. Do you live in any of these cities? Are you unhappy? Would you describe your unhappiness as conditional and dependent on external forces, or so pervasive you barely notice it?
