Current Affairs

It used to be that mostly lefty academics and goofy movie stars romanticized Fidel Castro as anything other than the thuggish leader of a brutal dictatorship. But when el jefe relinquished power this week, it became clear that the romanticized drivel is everywhere:

Research dollars hard at work provide this week's "well, duh" moment:

We didn't know anything about the "science" of play. We just loved it -- and our parents no doubt did too. So, why did we play? Why not?

Welcome to real life, boys:

One of the students, William Martin, a freshman political science major, responded to an e-mail sent by ABC News to all nine of the alleged offenders asking if there was another side of the story.

"nobody (sic) ever looks at the good things a person does with their life," Martin wrote, describing a trip to Mexico during which he built houses and other volunteer work feeding the hungry.

Wow, we couldn't see this one coming. The "Millenial Generation" coming out of college to mingle with us Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers in the workplace are having trouble coping:

"They wipe out on life as often as they wipe out on work itself," says Mr. Hannay, who let go more than a dozen millennials from his 130-person staff over the course of 2006.

Cut down those damn trees -- they're thwarting my efforts to use Earth-friendly energy!

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - In an environmental dispute seemingly scripted for eco-friendly California, a man asked prosecutors to file charges against his neighbors because their towering redwoods blocked sunlight to his backyard solar panels.

Sure, it's nice to be able to download those movies and TV shows right to your computer, but is that gonna save your life?

Barry McRoy is one lucky guy. The fire chief says a DVD in his jacket pocket stopped a bullet from entering his stomach during a shooting Saturday at a restaurant in Walterboro, S.C.

McRoy, director of Colleton County's fire department, says two men were fighting when the gun went off in the foyer of the local Waffle House.

Thank goodness. After all this time, I was afraid the media were just going to let this drop, and we never would find out the truth:

Weeks before Princess Diana died, she told her lover, Dodi Fayed, she feared the royal family was plotting to kill her and make it look like an accident, a former assistant to Fayed testified Tuesday.

Melissa Henning quoted Fayed as saying Diana told him the accident would happen when her sons, Princes William and Harry, were not around.

What comes between the pig and the cow? The rat, of course:

About 1,500 people celebrated the Chinese New Year and Lantern Festival at Carmel High School on Sunday.

No insights to offer here. I just found it interesting:

As the Iraq war approaches its fifth anniversary and 4,000th U.S. military fatality, about three dozen cities with populations above 100,000 have not lost a servicemember in the conflict, according to the Pentagon's list of the deceased's hometowns.

Arizona may actually do what a lot of gun-rights advocates have been urging: 

A committee of the Arizona Legislature is weighing arguments made today over a proposal to let people with permits to carry concealed weapons bring guns to K-12 schools, community colleges and universities.

The Senate's Judiciary Committee listened to more than two hours of testimony about the proposal, but didn't take a vote.