Well, you can’t get a much better review than that. Here’s the full NYT review, and here’s some select snippets from the review: Approaching Chris Columbus’s film adaptation, which reunites most of the original Broadway cast to belt out Mr. Larson’s lung-stretching songs about love, art, real estate and AIDS, I was inclined toward the latter category. Two hours later, … Read More
Bush Kept Intelligence From Congress — The List Grows
From The National Journal: Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant … Read More
University of Kansas To Offer Course on Intelligent Design
I guess the University of Kansas has had enough of local school board in Kansas trying to wedge creationism into the public school curriculum: LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) – Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution. A course being offered next … Read More
Easongate
Back in February, CNN executive Eason Jordon made comments to the effect that the U.S. military targeted journalists. The rightwing blogosphere went ballistic, decrying Jordon’s comments as absurd and unsubstantiated. The whole thing was dubbed "Easongate", and within days, Eason Jordon resigned. Turns out Eason Jordon wasn’t far off the mark: US President George W. Bush planned to bomb pan-Arab … Read More
Have A Whiny Christmas
Looks like the family values folks are going to make this yuletide holiday miserable for everyone. First, there’s Jerry Falwell, who has a team of 750 lawyers ready to litigate the pants off of anybody who expresses secular thoughts during Christmas. ("What would Jesus do?" Subpoena your ass!!!) Then there’s the boycott-crazy American Family Association, choosing now to boycott Target … Read More
Stupid.com
A town in Idaho has decided to change its name to "SecretSanta.Com" in order to hype an online gift exchange management service. I kid you not. Surprisingly, this is not the first time this has happened. Just ask the folks in Half.com, Oregon. [Half.com is an e-Bay-like online audition site].
Did You Know This?
You may be aware that the death toll for Katrina officially stands at roughly 1,300 (and still rising slowly), but were you aware that 6,644 people are still unaccounted for?
A Spit-Take Moment
John O’Neill, head of the "Swift Boat Veterans For Truth" (the group that circulated unfounded rumors about Kerry’s Vietnam service) is back at it, engaging in more historical rewrites. Just read this sentence from O’Neill’s op-ed in The New York Sun (subscription required): Are the politicians like Mr. Kerry who led the campaign to send our kids to war (when … Read More
Rent: A Review
Well, I read my first review of the movie I have been waiting to see for a long time — "Rent". It looks like I won’t be disappointed. Here are excerpts from The Hollywood Reporter: "Rent" is one of the best film musicals in years — exuberant, sexy and life affirming in equal measure. Jonathan Larson’s 1996 Tony- and Pulitzer … Read More
And Now, The Iraqis Weigh In
From Bloomberg: Iraqi leaders, meeting at a reconciliation conference in Cairo, urged an end to violence in the country and demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq. In a final statement, read by Arab League chief Amre Moussa, host of the three-day summit, they called for "the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through … Read More
Broadway May Be Hitting A New Low
From Playbill: Britney Spears, the international pop star who became a mother this past summer, and recent Sweet Charity audience member, may be Broadway bound. "The Insider" has reported that the 23-year-old performer is in talks to replace Christina Applegate in the revival of Sweet Charity at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. The television gossip program also reported that Spears’ husband, … Read More
Mildly Depressed People Are More Perceptive
This is one of those scientific studies where I go "Duh", but apparently the scientists at Queens College (in Canada) were astounded: Surprisingly, people with mild depression are actually more tuned into the feelings of others than those who aren’t depressed, a team of Queen’s psychologists has discovered. “This was quite unexpected because we tend to think that the opposite … Read More
Not Again
A statue of the Virgin Mary in some church in the Sacramento area is crying tears of blood. Can I just say something before we all get carried away? When I take a shower in my bathroom, and forget to turn on the fan or open a window, the walls (which are painted yellow), "bleed" red. Not a lot, just … Read More
The Pushback Strategy Debunked
Conservative blog Protein Wisdom summarizes the Bush "Pushback Strategy": Clearly, the important administration arguments are beginning to coalesce: 1) Criticism of the war is not by itself unpatriotic 2) Similarly, answering anti-war critics is not challenging their patriotism 3) But opportunistic and cynical anti-war critics who are trying to walk back their own votes and level spurious charges at the … Read More
Every Mother’s Nightmare
This is too funny. So everyone can appreciate it, let me explain the technology and background. Xbox Live is a game system where you can play games with other players over the Internet. In certain games, you play a character, and your opponent(s) play a character, and all of you run around a virtual world trying to kill each other. … Read More