arlyn, under construction

John Sununu snapping at CNN’s Soledad O’Brien for challenging his claim that President Obama’s health care plan took $717 billion from Medicare. Read the whole exchange at The Huffington Post. (via officialssay)

(via officialssay)

Today would have been Milton Friedman’s 100th birthday. Business Insider posted a 1979 interview he did with Phil Donahue. Friedman was against car airbags, doubted global warming and condemned the government bailout out Chrysler.

Aside from Chrysler, I don’t think I want to live in the world Friedman described. 

Okay, this may not be as epic a biography as Caro’s takes on Robert Moses or Lyndon Johnson. But don’t dismiss the writing and research skills of 11 year-old Chen Casella. She’s the daughter of journalist/author Eileen Daspin and chef/restaurateur Cesare Casella. For $3, her company, “Chen’s Idea,” will accept commissions to research and write biographies on, well, anyone. Digital rights are an additional $1.50.

After meeting her recently, I asked her to pen something on my favorite author, Harper Lee. Here’s what she came up with. (And yes, I paid the extra $1.50.)

Harper Lee: 1926-

By Chen Casella

Harper Lee’s novel, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird,’ won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961. The book helped change ideas of what people thought about different races.

Nelle Harper Lee was born April 28^th 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama.  She was the youngest of four children. Her parents were Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father was a former newspaper editor. He also served as a state senator and practiced as a lawyer.

To Kill a Mockingbird was Harper’s first and only novel. The book is set in Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s. Atticus Finch, a lawyer and a father, defends a black man, Tom Robinson, who is accused of hurting a poor white girl. The setting and a lot of the characters are from Lee’s life. Finch was the maiden name of Lee’s mother, and the character of Dill was from the famous writer, Truman Capote, Lee’s childhood friend. The trial itself has parts to the “Scottboro Trial”. The defendants were African-American men and the accusers white women.

Lee went to the public grammar school and high school in Monroeville.  She started writing as a young girl and kept at it while attending Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama from 1944 to 1945. In 1945, she transferred to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa to study law. She left in 1949 without completing her degree. While at Alabama, Harper wrote columns and stories for the university’s newspaper. In 1949, she left Alabama to start a literary career in New York.

Lee’s first job in New York was as an airline reservations clerk. After some time, and with the support of friends, she was able to quit her job and write full time. But it wasn’t easy. Her mother and brother died and she had many other responsibilities, but finally she finished after three years. The book was published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961. 

Harper Lee won many different awards for ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ in addition to the Pulitzer Prize: the Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (1961).  She also won the Alabama Library Association Award (1961), Bestsellers Paperback of the Year Award (1962), In 2002, Lee received the Alabama Humanities Award from the Alabama Humanities Foundation.

(Note: If you’re interested in hiring Chen, contact her mom: eileendaspin@yahoo.com)

“Waves spawned by the earthquake that hit Japan on Friday were literally off the charts — reaching up to 12 feet in some locations, according to reports. This graphic (above) was released Friday by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showing the projected size of the waves that moved halfway around the world on Friday.”

today in “who knew?!”

According to recent Nielsen SoundScan numbers, vinyl was the fastest-growing musical format in 2010, with 2.8 million units sold, the format’s best year since SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991.

Vinyl’s increase in popularity is providing a beacon of hope for independent record stores — an industry that has suffered with the increase of digital downloads this past decade.

(Source: inothernews)

Photo: Muslim Brotherhood member Mohamed el-Balatagy (top-center) protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square last week. 

more on what’s next for egypt… an interesting read:

theweekmagazine:

This week’s In-Depth Briefing gives a detailed look inside Egypt’s biggest opposition group, and the world’s largest and most influential Islamist movement: The Muslim Brotherhood.

While many of its older members are deeply conservative, many of the younger ones are modern and reform-minded. Khaled Hamza, a voice of moderation within the group and the editor of the group’s official website, says the Brotherhood would never support a rule by the clergy, as in Iran. “We do not believe Islam requires a theocracy,’’ he says. “Democracy is the only way.’’

Continue reading for more, including why the group was banned, whether or not it’s violent, and its potential rule in Egypt.

just in time for valentine’s day…

from the huffpost: 

Anderson Cooper talked to The Huffington Post from Cairo on Wednesday night, and described what happened to him this morning, when he and his crew were attacked by a group of supporters of President Hosni Mubarak.

“A man jumped out of the crowd and tried to push us around,” he said. “It sort of allowed other people in the crowd to focus on us. Other people came out of the crowd. Somebody punched me in the head, and from there things escalated quickly.”

The crew decided they had to turn around, he said. They tried to walk away “as calmly as possible,” but this did not calm the crowd around them.

“They were following us, screaming at us, ripping at our clothes,” he said. This lasted for five minutes. The mob threw bottles and water at the crew, and kept kicking and punching people. A few people tried to assist them, but they were overwhelmed by the pro-Mubarak group. Meanwhile, Egyptian soldiers watched the whole thing.

Cooper said he received four distinct blows to the head. “I’ve never been punched in the head before,” he said. “So they left an impression.”

He said it was the first time that he’d been directly attacked in a crowd while reporting a story. For now, he is staying away from Tahrir Square. It is not safe, he said, for any journalist to report from there.

favorite headline of the morning.

inothernews:

Front page, New York Post, Monday 24 January 2011.

Best one of the New York City bunch.

nprfreshair:

Sargent Shriver spoke to Terry Gross in 1995 about his role in President Johnson’s War on Poverty: “The way out of poverty was through human effort. People had to have motivation to move out of poverty. Then we’d help keep the motivation alive and aid it. But we didn’t just hand out money to people who had no motivation.”