Events

Via reader AS, Newsweek's Julia Baird on the dearth of female characters in "family" films: It was startling to discover that a new study has found that there is only one female character to every three male characters in family movies. Even creepier is the fact that many of the female characters are scantily clad, and hot (the Little Mermaid wasn’t always depicted popping out of a tiny bikini top). This study, undertaken by Stacy Smith and Marc Choueiti at the Annenberg School for Communication and...

Not my MBA, which finishes in 73 days. At least we're done with classes; all that remains are my distance classes and three projects. No, more interesting than that is how World War I finally ends on Sunday: The final payment of £59.5 million writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another. Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the...

A classmate sent me what turned out to be a hoax story claiming an activity that I will describe simply as a fun activity shared between a man and one other person can actually prevent breast cancer. Sadly, it can't, but apparently a component can do lots of other good things: [Psychologists Gordon] Gallup and [Rebecca] Burch reasoned that certain chemicals in human semen, through vaginal absorption, affect female biology in such a way that women who have condomless sex literally start to smell...

The looks on the opposition's faces are well worth the price of admission:

This might not be the thing for everyone's kitchen: Only $29.95 from ThinkGeek.

Yeah, it's just not as exciting as previous residencies, but it's seriously more work. Fortunately, I still have time to read gems like this: Terry Jones and the Dove World Outreach Center may be charged $200,000 by the city of Gainesville, Florida, for security costs incurred by the canceled Koran-burning originally planned for September 11. Jones' announcement of "International Burn-A-Koran" day resulted in some violent protests in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and threats against Americans. In response...

From Dan Savage the week before last: Is everyone in the Republican Party a closeted homosexual? —Ken Mehlman's Out Now Everyone except Ken Mehlman and Ben Quayle. Of course, this simply isn't true. Other Republican leaders have come out as well.

Apparently a former Hitler Youth called me a Nazi today: The pontiff praised Britain's fight against the Nazis - who "wished to eradicate God" - before relating it to modern day "atheist extremism". Afterwards his spokesman Federico Lombardi said: "I think the Pope knows rather well what the Nazi ideology is". Yes, Ratzinger should know what the Nazi ideology is, but I'm afraid we athiests are rather unlike him. In the same speech he also said, "I also recall the regime's attitude to Christian pastors...

I regret my headline from Tuesday. Apparently, the man committed suicide: The young man who died in a pipe bomb explosion Tuesday in Evanston committed suicide after a nearly lifelong fight with depression, his family said Wednesday. "We are devastated that our beloved son, Colin Dalebroux, lost his 15-year battle with depression," the family said in a statement from their home in Madison, Wis. "We know that Colin committed suicide." It's one thing if he had died trying to hurt other people; quite a...

Sullivan asks, "What if the Pope came to Britain and not even the Catholics showed up?" ONLY 65,000 Catholics are now expected to take part in the papal mass in Scotland tomorrow – one third fewer than originally expected and a mere fraction of the total number in the country. The figure falls far short of the 100,000 pilgrims it was originally hoped would flock to see Pope Benedict XVI at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow. The Catholic Church denied that the controversy over the Pope's handling of the...