An unsmiling Katherine Heigl, at work on a new movie in this Pittsburgh suburb in August, stepped out of a chauffeured black S.U.V. and strode onto the set. She briskly filmed her scene and decamped to her air-conditioned trailer. “I admit that I’m particular about the way I work,” she said, stopping to stare at a stuffed rabbit on the floor. She ( Read more... )

Heinlein imagined wild headlines for the Crazy Years (his speculative ridiculous future timeline)...but he didn't imagine all the times nowadays when it's just the journalists by their own clueless credulity making the world that ridiculous.

These leapt out at me re: discovery of an exciting new planet 20+ light years away:
Odds of Life on Nearby ( Read more... )

Apparently, Mormons are the atheists of current national politics. This must be why I still love Big Love!

This is my most appreciated (& reread!) reminder piece of 2010. Thank you to all who posted it. Subject line is my 3 second summary of the whole thing. A litany against regrets.

"I've made a huge mistake."

This summer (back when it was summer!), I started a temporary nasty habit of reading the news. I justify this habit as "mixing it up." Seeing news means breaking decades of peaceful ignorance, of going out of my way to avoid what passes for current events...and especially to avoid something far more horrifying than the events themselves: current ( Read more... )

'Cougars' apparently don't openly go hunting on major online dating sites. Therefore they don't exist! At all!!

There’s an alternative universe pretty close to ours where things went subtly different in 1975 or so...and the rednecks starting watching action/adventure/SF movies featuring airships and steampunkish trumpetguns, while the hipsters got more into Boris Valejo paintings with their massive barbarian swords ( Read more... )

Reading this certainly won't suck! (just start at the "* * *" if you wanna skip the personal story)

Clinching the election,
Obama Says He Would Agree to Some Drilling (NYT)
It's a new era. JFK & WJC always had to leave these things implicit, with a twinkle in the eye or at most a wink.

Viewing the conference, more than half of BHO's "likely voters" slid from Moderately/Strongly Approving to Curiously/Thoroughly Titillated.

A New Camelot!

These 4 perfect paragraphs should inform every conversation. Undoubtedly, they'll inform many. Unfortunately, I'd bet barrels to dollars they won't inform the main public conversation this decade...