It's not surprising, but it is depressing.

A 40-foot long dead gray whale washed up on an Oregon beach this morning.  Oregon has a somewhat sketchy record on dealing with such things, so I can only hope we've learned from our mistakes and the horror of giant chunks of whale blubber raining from the sky will not be repeated.

So apparently Mary Cheney gave birth to a little bundle of joy today.  Cute as a button, ain't he?  I bet his mamas are proud.  Wait a minute...where are his mamas, anyway?  This is the official picture announcing the kid's birth - you think his parents would have something to do with it.  I see the proud patriarch himself, his wife, their grandson ( Read more... )

I've been tossing around the idea of getting involved in some activism and outreach for a while now.  I feel like up until now I've been standing on the shoulders of giants, benefitting from the hard work of others without really doing anything of my own.  Of course, I've also been plenty busy wrestling with my own problems, so doing my part to ( Read more... )

I saw the new Spiderman movie this weekend, and it was good.  But not great.  The action sequences thrilled, the story and characters were (mostly) engaging, but I couldn't help leaving the theater thinking, "Wow, that was a long movie.  Too long."  Personally, I think you could have taken Sandman completely out of the film and been left with a ( Read more... )

So apparently Portland Center stage is going to be putting on a production of Cabaret this fall.  With Storm Large playing Ms. Sally Bowles.  Wade McCollum co-starring.

I'm not gonna miss this show for the world.

I had absolutely no idea they were making a movie based on Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials.  It's due out in December - why was I not notified?  I loved every one of those books, from their mature outlook on morality to their vicious indictments of organized religion.  I worry about how much of that tone is going to survive the transition to ( Read more... )

I guess I'm kind of on a roll with the feminist posts, here, but I found this short article about the psychology of mass murderers like Cho Seung-Hui to be particularly insightful.  Here's an excerpt:

"...a close look at the patterns of murderous violence in the U.S. reveals some remarkable consistencies, wherever the individual atrocities may ( Read more... )

My earlier post about the vindication of the Duke lacrosse players was brief, containing nothing more than a link and the following comment: "About fucking time.  Maybe now these guys can finally start putting their lives back together."  Nothing more was said.  And over the last week or so, I've come to regret that ( Read more... )

There are voices of progress and freedom in the Middle East.  The sooner we stop waging our war, plundering their resources, and interfering in their affairs, the sooner the fundamentalists that suppress these voices will lose their support.