Current Affairs

Man, the toys for adults are just getting cooler and cooler:

The Packet8 VideoPhone delivers high-quality, full-motion video and clear, delay-free audio over any broadband (high-speed Cable or DSL) Internet connection.

You know they've taken the anti-smoking crusade a tad too far when they start messing with Arthur Miller.

Love this headline: "Knight Ridder to Explore Selling Newspapers." What a concept. I thought that's what we were doing. Not enough, apparently.

You all knew nobody is responsible for anything anymore, so it seems only right that we have a list "Top 10 victims stories of 2005," even though the year isn't over yet. My favorite:

REDHEADS ARE VICTIMIZED BY CRUEL JOKES AND SLURS. New Zealanders with red or ginger hair have organized against hair-color bigotry, founding groups such as the Ginger Revolution and Redheads United.

When is getting fired not the worst thing that could happen to you? When the alternative was the beginning of the end of the world.

I don't believe for a minute that this female bank robber is talking to a co-conspirator or just using the phone as a prop. Imagined conversation: "Betty, you wouldn't believe what this teller is wearing. It's so tacky. And that hairdo! Yes, I can meet you for lunch in about half an hour. Yes, I'll pay this time, no problem. Hang on a sec. Hey, Hon, just the 10s and 20s, all right? Skip the small stuff. Betty? I'm back. Bill? No, that's over.

Science marches on: Researchers at Brown Medical School did a big study and concluded that sleepy students don't perform well. Shocking, simply shocking.

"Happy Holidays" is all right, but Happy HanKwanMas has a nice right, don't you think? Christkahzaa, maybe? Maybe we should just call it the Joyous Shopping Season and be done with it.

Here's more on San Francisco's idiotic handgun ban:

So bad guys will keep their handguns, and only good guys will give theirs up. That may be good for the bad guys, but it looks bad for the good guys.

When the two "sculptures" were first installed at the site of the art museum, I savaged them in editorials and columns as examples of what wanna-be sophisticates in a small city would put up with in order to think of themselves as worldly.