from MySanAntonio.com

Houston man who invented Weed Eater dies at 85

HOUSTON (AP) — George C. Ballas Sr., a Houston entrepreneur best known for inventing the Weed Eater, has died. He was 85.

Ballas’ son, Corky Ballas, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that his father died of natural causes on Saturday.

“He changed the way we cut grass,” Corky Ballas said.

Ballas got the idea for the Weed Eater, a device also commonly known as a weed whacker, while sitting in a car wash. He wondered whether the idea of spinning bristles, like the ones cleaning his car, could be applied to trimming grass and weeds in areas a lawnmower couldn’t reach.

He experimented with fishing wire that poked through holes in a tin can attached to the rotary of a lawn edger, and found that the spinning wires easily sliced through grass, The Houston Chronicle reported.

But George Ballas, who was born in Ruston, La., was also a dance studio owner and dance was an important part of his family’s life.

After moving to Houston in the late 1950s, he built and operated the Dance City USA Studio. With 120 instructors and 43,000 square feet of space, it was heralded as the largest dance studio in the world. He sold it in 1964.

Ballas’ wife, Maria Louisa Ballas, was a noted flamenco dancer who studied with famed Spanish dancer Carmen Amaya and appeared in several films.

Corky Ballas became a champion ballroom dancer, and his son, Mark Ballas, is a professional dancer. Both of them have appeared on “Dancing With the Stars.”

[ click to read full article at MySanAntonio.com ]

excerpt posted at The Sun UK

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from Plum TV

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from 10 TV News

Woman Arrested After Allegedly Spraying Deputies With Breast Milk

Monday,  June 27, 2011 5:48 AM

DELAWARE, Ohio — A woman faces several charges after she allegedly sprayed deputies with breast milk as they tried to detain her over the weekend.

The incident occurred early Saturday morning near the Bridgewater Banquet & Conference Center on Sawmill Parkway.

According to the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were called to the area after receiving calls about a domestic dispute.  When they arrived, a man told them that he had been attending a wedding at the facility with his wife, who had gotten drunk and struck him several times before locking herself in a car.

Delaware County Sheriff Walter L. Davis III said deputies tried to talk with the woman, who was identified as Stephanie Robinette, 30, of Westerville, but she refused to cooperate.

“When deputies attempted to remove Robinette from the vehicle, she advised the deputies that she was a breast feeding mother and proceeded to remove her right breast from her dress and began spraying deputies and the vehicle with her breast milk,” Davis said.

[ click to continue reading at 10TV ]

from The Huffington AOL

[ click to read at HuffPo ]

from 27east.com

BOOKHAMPTON WELCOMES AUTHOR JAMES FREY

WHEN:
Sat, Jun 25, 2011
8:00 PM-9:00 PM

WHERE:
BookHampton
41 Main Street
East Hampton

DETAILS:
James Frey will read from and sign his new book, “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible.”

CONTACT INFORMATION:
Any bookseller bookhampton@bookhampton.com
631 324-4939

[ click to read at 27east.com ]

from E! Online

Columbo Star Peter Falk Dead at 83

by JOSH GROSSBERG

NBCU Photo Bank via AP Images

Peter Falk, the legendary actor who graced both big screen and small over a 50-year career but will perhaps best be remembered for his Emmy-winning role as the shabby-dressed, wisecracking homicide detective on TV’s Columbo, has died. He was 83.

Falk’s family confirmed to CBS News the two-time Academy Award nominee passed away last night, though no cause of death has been announced.

As the cigar-chomping, seemingly slow-witted lieutenant Columbo, Falk was the epitome of cool as he went about solving some of TV’s most perplexing mysteries with the classic catchprase, “Just One More Thing.” Episodes aired regularly from 1971 to 1978 on NBC, before appearing sporadically as made-for-TV movies on both the Peacock net and ABC in subsequent years. The lastColumbo episode was broadcast in 2003 and the iconic part nabbed the thesp four Emmy Awards (the fifth came in 1962 for the Dick Powell TV drama The Price of Tomatoes).

[ click to continue reading at E! ]

from Exhibition A

JAMES FREY PREVIEWING ED TEMPLETON’S HALF GALLERY SHOW

POSTED ON JUNE 23, 2011 BY EXHIBITION A TEAM

[ click to view at Exhibition A ]

from The Wall Street Journal

Art in Aisle 5: Barcodes Enter Expressionist Period

By SARAH NASSAUER

Design Barcodes Inc. (man, skyline); Vanity Barcodes LLC (3)

Some proposed barcode designs, from left, depict a hand mixer, jelly beans, skyline, school bus and trousers.

Package design has become so artful, it has come to this: Even the barcode, the style runt of product labeling, is getting gussied up.

Beer, granola, juice and olives are sporting barcodes that integrate famous buildings, blades of wheat and bubbles into the ubiquitous black and white rectangle of lines and numbers. Consumer-goods companies hope these vanity barcodes will better connect with customers.

The trend is popular with smaller companies, and even one of the world’s largest food companies, Nestle SA, is trying out vanity barcodes on its smaller brands.

When Sixpoint Brewery planned to launch a line of canned beer this year, the Brooklyn, N.Y., company set out to fashion the perfect can design. It soon realized, “you need this big, ugly barcode so people can scan them,” says Shane Welch, president of Mad Scientists Brewing Partners LLC, which owns Sixpoint. “I thought, why can’t we do our own custom barcode?” Launched last month, the silver cans bear a barcode that integrates the Statue of Liberty and skyscrapers.

A handful of companies that specialize in making vanity barcodes have cropped up in recent years, though some companies create them in-house.

[ click to continue reading at WSJ.com ]

from The Arizona Republic

[ click to read full recipe at AZCentral.com ]

from Oprah.com

Oprah and James Frey Prepare for Their Interview

Tag along on the morning of Oprah’s final sit-down with James Frey. Watch how they both prepare for their first on-camera conversation since the infamous 2006 interview. More from this show

[ click to view at Oprah.com ]

from Web 2.0 Suicide Machine 

Tired of your Social Network?

Liberate your newbie friends with a Web2.0 suicide! This machine lets you delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego. The machine is just a metaphor for the website which moddr_ is hosting; the belly of the beast where the web2.0 suicide scripts are maintained. Our service currently runs with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn! Commit NOW!

Feel free like a real bird again and untwitter yourself. Watch it here!

[ assassinate your online self with the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine ]

from PR Newswire

Gagosian Gallery’s iPad App, Designed by Award-Winning Firm @radical.media, Launches Today Taking Users on an In-Depth Journey With Gagosian’s Artists and Exhibitions

NEW YORK, June 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Gagosian Gallery announces the launch of an application for the iPad, available as a free download from the iTunes store, beginning today. The app will be updated four times per year, providing content that features recent, current, and future Gagosian artists, exhibitions, and projects. The artists presented in edition #1 include Richard Avedon, Cecily Brown, John Currin, Vera Lutter, Kazimir Malevich, Elizabeth Peyton, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Prince, and Rudolf Stingel.

Admirers of John Currin’s opulent portraiture will revel in the app’s gigapixel digital expose of a recent painting, as well as a 2010 lecture by the artist. Other projects include an interview with writer James Frey about his 2011 novel, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, published by Gagosian Gallery.  The app also offers excerpts from scholar Aleksandra Shatskikh’s catalogue essay for the historic exhibition “Malevich and the American Legacy” (March 3–April 30, 2011, New York).

Viewers can relive a key moment in art history by watching archival footage of Rauschenberg’s

1966 performance, Open Score; or follow a tour by curator Francesco Bonami of “Rudolf Stingel” (March 4 – April 16, 2011, New York).

[ click to read full release at PR Newswire ]

from mental_floss

The Quick 10: 10 Literary Smack-Downs, Quips, and Squabblesby Adrienne Crezo - June 14, 2011 - 10:21 PM

[ click to continue reading at mentalfloss.com ]

from Shelf Awareness

Quotation of the Day

Forty-Year-Old Wisdom About Libraries

“[A library] isn’t just a library. It is a space ship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the Universe, a time machine that will take you to the far past and the far future, a teacher that knows more than any human being, a friend that will amuse you and console you–and most of all, a gateway, to a better and happier and more useful life.”

–Isaac Asimov in a March 16, 1971, letter to children at the newly opened Troy, Mich., public library, as posted on lettersofnote.com.

[ click to read at Shelf-Awareness.com ]

from The Guardian UK

Dogs in fiction - quiz

Can you sniff out the right answers in our jaw-gnashingly difficult canine quiz? Test your knowledge of tails in tales and find out if you’re top dog in the pack

[ click to take the full quiz at The Guardian ]

from the NY Daily News

St. Louis woman awarded $95 million after former boss allegedly masturbated on her

BY NINA MANDELL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

A St. Louis woman who said she was hit on the head with her boss’ genitals was awarded what her attorneys believe is the largest payout ever in an American sexual harassment lawsuit.

Ashley Alford was awarded $95 million in compensation from The Aaron’s Inc., a large rent-to-own furniture chain after she said the store failed to act after a manager allegedly assaulted her twice in one day, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Alford claimed that the store’s then-manager, Richard Moore, gave her inappropriate nicknames and touched her inappropriately when she first began working there in 2005. Nearly a year after she was hired, she claimed, he came up to her in the stock room and whacked her on the head with his penis. Then, later that day, he lifted her shirt and masturbated over her as he held her down, she said.

He did not return to work after those incidents.

[ click to read full article at NYDailyNews.com ]

from The Arizona Republic

[ click to read recipe at AZCentral.com ]

from Exhibition A

GLENN O’BRIEN

Glenn O’Brien playing blackjack with fellow author James Frey

Glenn O’Brien is the author of “How to Be A Man” and for years wrote a great column at ArtForum called “Like Art.” He was previously the editorial director at Interview magazine and once hosted a cult classic tv show, “TV Party.”

First piece of art you ever bought or were gifted?

When I was in college I bought a set of Les Levine’s “disposable” sculptures from Max Protech at his gallery in Washington.

Artist quote to live by?

“I don’t mess around with my subconscious.” -Robert Rauschenberg

[ click to continue interview at ExhibitionA.com ]

from The Observer’s Very Short List

[ click to visit NewspaperMap.com ]

Indalo (Mojacar Man)

Indalo is an ancient Andalusian symbol. The original image,dating from Neolithic times, can still be seen in the “Cave of the Signboards” at Almeria, in Southern Spain. He appears as the figure of a man carrying a rainbow between his hands, alongside figures of animals, horned men, and a number of odd symbols.

The name Indalo is derived from the latin phrase “Indal Eccius,” or “Messenger of the Gods.”

Indalo’s original meaning and purpose has been lost, but it most likely represents a Shaman or a God figure.Today, the figure is closely associated with the village of Mojacar, and is used there as a symbol of luck and good fortune, and to ward off evil. Like the Native American Kokopelli, he is often emblazoned on businesses, homes, and souvenirs for tourists.

Related Symbols:

[ click to read more at symboldictionary.net ]

[ click to visit Alamo Drafthouse @ drafthouse.com ]

from NPR

The Believing Brain: From Ghosts To Gods To Politics And Conspiracies — How We Construct Beliefs And Reinforce Them As Truths

By Michael Shermer, hardcover, 400 pages, Times Books, list price: $28

“Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow.” That’s the argument professional skeptic Michael Shermer makes in The Believing Brain, a book that fuses neuroscience, sociology and the author’s own biographical stories into a compelling and sometimes deeply personal read — even if you don’t agree with him on everything. And you won’t.

Shermer, a former evangelical Christian who became an agnostic in college, now dedicates his sprawling career to debunking what he sees as superstitions and failures of logic, from religion to alien abduction to Sept. 11 conspiracy theories.

[ click to continue reading at NPR.org ]

from The New York Times

A Chronicler of the Art-Vandal Underground

Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

Mr. Seelie, center with camera, shooting Lightning Bolt, a punk band, in April.

by ALAN FEUER

In the windy darkness of a recent spring morning, 30 people of an arty, mostly Brooklynite persuasion gathered after midnight for an illicit get-together in a maintenance shed, high atop the Williamsburg Bridge. Billed as the “Third-Annual NYC Undercover, You-Might-Be-Arrested, Clandestine Errantry Trespassing Adventure Party,” the event attracted members of a distinct, risk-taking subset of the New York art world — heights-loving writers, courageous painters, a devil-may-care guitarist, a guy lugging bongos and the Williamsburg photographer, Tod Seelie — all of whom had been quietly invited to the late-night affair by its pseudonymous organizers, Agent Verde and Agent Rojo.

After scrambling over a 10-foot-high security fence, the partygoers climbed a steel staircase — the lights of Manhattan glimmering below — as part of a vertiginous, invigorating trip that culminated in a catwalk, a ladder and finally a narrow hatchway, leading up to a low-ceilinged room of riveted metal plates. There, for more than an hour, the group made music and unauthorized public art. Light was provided by votive candles and flashlights. Mr. Seelie, a bald man sporting tattoos and a Fu Manchu mustache, camera at his eye, stood taking pictures in the middle of the room.

“When a trip takes this much effort,” he said, “there’s usually something worthwhile at the end.”

[ click to continue reading at the New York Times ]

from The Daily

Graeme Wood describes Elvis’ all-time favorite sandwich, the 8,000-calorie Fool’s Gold Loaf. We’re looking for the most ridiculous sandwiches out there.

[ click to read at The Daily ]

from The Arizona Republic

Honeydew and Basil Pops

Michael McNamara/The Arizona Republic

Martie Sullivan of Sweet Basil

1 small honeydew melon, rind and seeds removed, and cut into 1-inch cubes
6 basil leaves
2 teaspoons lime juice
2 tablespoons sugar
 1/2 cup watermelon chunks for garnish

For Zoku Quick Pops, puree 12 cubes of honeydew, basil leaves, lime juice and sugar in a blender. Pour into…

[ click to continue recipe at AZCentral.com ]