From the "guys with cool cars get the chicks" department, Vintage Sleaze reports on Bettie Page's affair with Richard Arbib, designer of the iconic Ford Atmos concept car.

Vintage Sleaze: Bettie Page and the Designer Living Dangerously. Ford Atmos Space Age Car and the Best Auto Model in the Business

Is that Miss Bettie Page riding in a space-age concept car produced by Ford in 1954? A car which 60 years ago was designed to do what the hands-free Google car is attempting today? Of COURSE it is, as it now appears the model was having an affair with the married designer sitting next to her.

This used to be a big controversy in the little Bettie Page underground. Is it her? (whisper…) Well, of course it is her, and that is her boyfriend at the time, space age designer Richard Arbib at the wheel. Well "grips" actually, as the design was steered like an airplane.

It can happen even in a "very quiet, peaceful" neighborhood: someone with a history of violence breaks into a home, and by their behavior makes it clear that they have aggressive intent. What would you do? If you believe in firearm prohibition, what do you think this family should have done instead?

Yet on the other hand, reading Facebook comments about this story, the glee with which many people are treating this incident is disturbing. This was a human life which went wrong, and that calls for sober reflection. How did Mitchell Large come to be such a broken human being? Why was someone with a history of violence not under closer supervision? How did we reach the point where the best thing to do with this person was to shoot them?

Winter Haven family opens fire, kills would-be intruder

Winter Haven, FL -- In short, say Winter Haven police, 40-year-old Mitchell Large messed with the wrong house.

Three members of the Pena family- Luis, his wife and adult son- all armed themselves shortly before 7:00 Monday morning after awakening to the sound of someone on their back porch.

"It appears at least two of the family members fired in defense of themselves and their property," said Winter Haven police Chief Chief Hester.

It seems likely that there's a sort of placebo effect at work, making people believe certain violins sound better or play better.

Elite Violinists Fail to Distinguish Legendary Violins From Modern Fiddles

If you know only one thing about violins, it is probably this: A 300-year-old Stradivarius supposedly possesses mysterious tonal qualities unmatched by modern instruments. However, even elite violinists cannot tell a Stradivarius from a top-quality modern violin, a new double-blind study suggests....

"There is nothing magical [about old Italian violins], there is nothing that is impossible to reproduce," says Olivier Charlier, a soloist who participated in the study and who plays a fiddle made by Carlo Bergonzi (1683 to 1747). However, Yi-Jia Susanne Hou, a soloist who participated in the study and who until recently played a violin by Bartolomeo Giuseppe Antonio Guarneri "del Gesù" (1698 to 1744), questions whether the test was fair. "Whereas I believe that [the researchers] assembled some of the finest contemporary instruments, I am quite certain that they didn't have some of the finest old instruments that exist," she says.

Eric Garland writes on how the musical instrument business is "a microcosm of every other problem in the global economy":

How to get beyond the parasite economy (Eric Garland)

This is the logic at play with Guitar Center. Financial parasites have taken over the host company and could not care less about the industry itself. They install some CEO who used to be selling DVD players. They swap private equity firms in and out. It doesn’t matter – it’s just another place for loose capital to suck out a few extra dollars or a tax break. After all, the entire value of the company is less than what JPMorgan paid in fines last year without breaking a sweat.

In the final analysis, this is less about business sense and more about business domination. There are dozens of industries that have been locked up by a few players in this way: mortgages, cars, pharmaceuticals, retail, you name it. Since the chances of antitrust suits under “leaders” like George W Bush and Barack Obama are so low, the tiny tranche of society with all the money can run a time-worn playbook – consolidate companies, squeeze vendors, push manufacturing overseas, lower wages, wash, rinse, repeat, discard. The numbers of the business – which suck in GC’s case – do not matter as much as control of yet another industry. As long as you have dominance over an industry, your positions are hedged for risk automatically because there is no other game in town – or at least people believe that. In the meantime, you get management fees, income from bonds, the occasional IPO payout.

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All of this cold-blooded nonsense stands in stark contrast to the amazing people I have met in every other corner of the industry, including the actual long-time employees of Guitar Center who have reached out to me. I have had the tremendous honor to speak with inventors, entrepreneurs, retailers and fellow musicians about current events and I have been astonished by their intelligence, kindness, creativity and overall sense of humanity. All of this is diminished by the presence of these rapacious colonialists and it is time for them to take their leave of our economy, starting with the musical instrument industry.

While Saudi Arabia still won't permit women to drive, Palestine is training female special operations soldiers. Yet the U.S. remains buddy-buddy with the Sauds while refusing to recognize the existence of Palestine.

First women joining Palestinian commando unit (Yahoo News)

The 22 future commandos are trailblazers in a still largely male-dominated society, set to become the first female members of the Presidential Guards, a Palestinian elite force of 2,600 men. Their inclusion is the result of gradual changes in the West Bank in recent years.

Some gender barriers have fallen, with a few women assuming posts as mayors, judges and Cabinet ministers or starting their own businesses. At the same time, unemployment is on the rise, and families are more open to women entering non-traditional jobs if it means another paycheck.

Women make up just 3 percent of 30,000 members of the Palestinian police and other security agencies in the West Bank, but there's a push to recruit more, said Brig. Rashideh Mughrabi, in charge of gender issues in the National Security Forces.

He should never have gotten in in the first place, but this is good news.

Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO - Slashdot

"Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He's made this decision for Mozilla and our community. Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard ..."

Taking Citizen's United to the next level, SCOUTS rules 5-4 that capping the amount of influence one can buy in politics is unconstitutional. So much for the last shreds of the American experiment in democracy. The only question now is whether 99% of us can eke out a living as rats in the wainscotting of the ruling class, or whether we manage to sneak out in the middle of the night and eat them, or if they exterminate us -- with continuing advances in tech, once machines start making machines what need have the 1% of the working classes?

SCOTUS Strikes Down Aggregate Campaign Donor Limits in Citizens United Sequel (Slate Magazine)

The Supreme Court is out this morning with its big ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which court watchers had billed as everything from the "blockbuster money-in-politics case of the current term" to a "sort of sequel to Citizens United," via Politico:

The Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that caps on the total amount of money an individual can give to political campaigns and PACs are unconstitutional.

The court's Republican-appointed justices joined in overturning the so-called aggregate limits on the grounds that they violated the First Amendment. Democratic appointees dissented and said the limits were constitutional as a means to guard against corruption

Harvard discovers three of its library books are bound in human flesh (Roadtrippers)

A few years ago, three separate books were discovered in Harvard University's library that had particularly strange-looking leather covers. Upon further inspection, it was discovered that the smooth binding was actually human flesh... in one case, skin harvested from a man who was flayed alive. Yep, definitely the creepiest library ever.

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Harvard's creepy books deal with Roman poetry, French philosophy, and a treatise on medieval Spanish law for which the previously mentioned flayed skin was used. The book, Practicarum quaestionum circa leges regias… has a very interesting inscription inside, as The Harvard Crimson reports.

The book’s 794th and final page includes an inscription in purple cursive: ‘the bynding of this booke is all that remains of my dear friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King Mbesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace.’

"In all cases examined by Amnesty International, Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers did not appear to be posing a direct and immediate threat to life. In some, there is evidence that they were victims of wilful killings, which would amount to war crimes." Yet in spite of evidence of war crimes, the Obama administration wants to send $3,100,000,000 dollars in military aid to Israel

‘Trigger-happy’ Israeli army and police use reckless force in the West Bank | Amnesty International

Israeli forces have displayed a callous disregard for human life by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, in the occupied West Bank over the past three years with near total impunity, said Amnesty International in a report published today.

The report, Trigger-happy: Israel’s use of excessive force in the West Bank, describes mounting bloodshed and human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) as a result of the Israeli forces’ use of unnecessary, arbitrary and brutal force against Palestinians since January 2011.