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Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas):
Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful. They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?
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There are few artists whose new albums are met with as much anticipation as Kanye West, the rapper/singer/producer/provocateur who’s become as notorious for his outsized personality and social media presence as he has for his brilliant, deeply innovative music. (Spoiler alert: The album contains a song titled “I Am A God.”)
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The last telegram ever is about to be sent
On July 14, someone somewhere in India will tap out what is being called the world’s last telegram. India’s state-owned telecom company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, has been holding out as other countries around the world retire their antiquated telegraph services. Now, after delaying the move for two years, the business operating what is considered to be the world’s last telegraph service is finally ready to pull the plug, saying telegrams are no longer commercially viable in the age of digital communications.
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Reality show drive-by: Rock My RV with Bret Michaels
Bret Michaels is a bit of a unicorn in the reality television pantheon — if only for the sheer length of time he has remained compulsively watchable. No matter how many cartoonish, nightmarish women he sucked face with on his hit VH1 dating show Rock of Love, Michaels remained likable (and even sincere). Anyone who remembers Michaels’ exploits with Destiny, Heather, Daisy, and Frenchie knows that it was a far less family-friendly Bret who charged his way through three seasons on Rock of Love before shifting into a new and comfortable career as Bret Michaels, Reality Star 2.0.
In his second phase of that transformation, Michaels appeared as a family man alongside his daughters and their mother in Bret Michaels: Life As I Know It, and even went on to win Celebrity Apprentice 3 on NBC. While his newest turn as the host of Rock My RV on the Travel Channel feels like yet another gear shift, the series is actually well-suited to the personable but aging rock star. If he’s not going to be running an oversized bandana factory, or overseeing the placement of rhinestones on T-shirts, Rock My RV is about as Bret as it gets.
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Photos of New York City’s Most Dangerous Neighborhood
“Bandit’s Roost,” pictured above, was once considered the most dangerous part in all of New York City.
Jacob A. Riis was a police reporter in 1877 and decided to document the people living in New York’s East Side slum district. His book, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, was the result of these photographs and was published in 1890.
Head over to Petapixel for more incredible photographs and info on Riis.
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Mad Men recap: “The Quality of Mercy”
For all his faults, Pete is too smart to make the same mistake twice, and he uses the information he’s gained not to burn a bridge with Bob, but to build a new one. “I don’t know how people like you do it,” says Pete, before apologizing to Bob and laying down a set of ground rules to smooth over their personal and professional ifferences.
Which raises the question Mad Men has been quietly teasing all season: Is Bob Benson the next Don Draper? It’s hard to say — but if “The Quality of Mercy” is any indication, Bob Benson might want to avoid the path that would turn him into Don Draper 2.0.
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What does Edward Snowden want?
The NSA leaker said he wanted to save America’s privacy from its government. Why are his new leaks all about U.S. spying abroad?
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Need something to watch on Netflix this weekend? We asked TheWeek.com’s entertainment editor, Scott Meslow, for a recommendation:
AMC’s semi-rebooted The Killing recently premiered its third season, and the show has definitely improved. But I have to admit, I’d be a lot more excited about it if I wasn’t already caught up in the dark, riveting BBC 2 The Fall, which recently made its Netflix debut — and which demonstrates almost everything The Killing could have (and should have) been.
The Fall stars X-Files alum Gillian Anderson as Stella Gibson, a detective superintendent called in to assist the local police as they attempt to track down a killer who’s been preying on young, single women in Belfast. There’s no “mystery,” in the conventional sense, in The Fall; we’re introduced to the killer even before we’ve met a single police officer, and the show spends as much time exploring his twisted psyche as it does depicting the police investigation designed to catch him. At just five episodes, you can easily knock out the entire first season over a single weekend — and given how addicting the show is, you’ll probably want to.
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The true story that inspired The Bling Ring
In 2010, E! Online aired an episode of the reality series Pretty Wild in which the show’s central figure, Alexis Neiers, left a tearful, screaming voicemail for Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales. “I’m calling to let you know how disappointed I am in your story,” said Neiers. “There’s many things I read in here that were false. Like you saying I wore six-inch Louboutin heels to court with my tweed skirt when I wore four-inch little brown Bebe shoes.”
But the story in question was about much more than footwear. Alex Neiers’ tantrum was inspired by Nancy Jo Sales’ 2010 Vanity Fair article The Suspects Wore Louboutins, which recounted the story of the so-called “Bling Ring” — a group of fame-obsessed teenagers who allegedly stole more than $3 million worth of clothing and jewelry from celebrities including Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Orlando Bloom. Sales’ story was adapted into the Sofia Coppola film The Bling Ring, which hits theaters in limited release today.
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How typeface influences the way we read and think
The hunt for the Higgs boson was one of the most expensive and labor-intensive particle physics projects ever undertaken, and promised to answer the fundamental but elusive question of why our atoms stick together in the first place. And yet, when CERN researchers finally announced that they’d glimpsed the Higgs, the world’s first reaction wasn’t to cheer; it was to stifle collective laughter. The institution’s scientists, cradling the most important scientific discovery of the decade, had chosen to present their findings to a breathless public using a peculiar font face: Comic Sans MS.
The whole kerfuffle underscored just how important typefaces are to the way we process information. Words hold power. But the aesthetic manner in which those words are presented can affect the way we read, and the way we think about the information presented.
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Can Time Warner Cable block Intel's internet cable plan?
As Intel prepares for the launch of its cable internet service — the one that could potentially change the way we watch television forever — cable companies, particularly Time Warner, are allegedly strategizing to guard their programming, in attempts to block the new player out of the game.
What exactly is Intel’s plan?
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Foals picks 6 songs you should listen to
Dance-rockers Foals helped TheWeek.com put together a little playlist, including…
Jon Hopkins, “Open Eye Signal”
“The new Jon Hopkins record, Immunity, is quite sad as well. I like the idea of it — it’s a concept record about a guy going out, sort of a trajectory of a night out on MDMA. “Open Eye Signal” is the track we’re pounding the most. The whole album feels very human — even though its basically a techno record, there’s beauty and fragility to it.”
