The state of the culture

Wishful thinking do-gooders love gun buybacks, deluding themselves into thinking the cause of public safety is somwhow being served when good people turn in their guns and bad people keep theirs. Now they've gone to the next logical step of indoctrinating our children with their delusion:

The coming death of mail as we know it -- no, no, not that mail; the other one:

Signs you're an old fogey: You still watch movies on a VCR, listen to vinyl records and shoot photos on film.

And you enjoy using e-mail.

No nation can claim to be sufficiently civilized if all its citizens* don't have an equal right to die for their country, so let's congratulate American gays and lesbians for getting to join the club. But, good lord, could there maybe be a little more joy and a little less pouty whining?

Emma Downs has a fascinating feature in the Sunday Journal Gazette profiling IPFW theater chair John O'Connell. He is a self-described "loud, flamboyant gay," and he thrived in Manhattan with its energy and tempo and the opportunities it provided. He liked finding bohemian ethnic restaurants and taking terrified relatives on city tours on the back of his motorcycle. And yet:

First we had people doing duets with dead singers, like Natalie singing with Nat and Hank Jr. singing with Hank Sr. Now comes George Lucas to really push the idea of getting all we can out of the talented dearly departed:

The grim We're Using Up The Earth And Nobody Cares But Us crowd is setting its sights on board games. This is the 75th anniversary of Monopoly, which provides an opportunity to remind us that, though we have the "bleakest economic climate since the 1930s" when the game was introduced, it's really even worse than that:

Rats. I was ready to declare another victory for the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy's efforts to drive the country crazy with All Things Palin, but my fellow wingnuts fell down on the job:

Before "Dancing with the Stars" crowned Jennifer Grey its champion Tuesday night, there was all kinds of discussion about how the ABC competition series could lose its credibility if Bristol Palin won.

We've talked here before about how our notions of privacy are changing in the digital age. Here's a couple really pushing the limits on what's in the public square:

Who says journalists wildly exaggerate the meaning of surveys to pump excitement into an otherwise humdrum news day?

Marriage is increasingly optional and could be on its way to obsolescence, according to a survey of more than 2,600 Americans that examines changing attitudes about relationships today.

How the phone book changed America: