I wrote this report for a class I'm taking, and would like a little feedback from you JUers, if you wouldn't mind. We were told to write a report on the 1970s.....being the oldest in the class by probably 15 years at least, I had to laugh. I'm very likely the only one there with a clear memory of the 1970s. The sad thing (for me) is, I wrote this report off the top of my head in about 3 hours.....no research needed. ~~~sigh~~~ Just a glance at some books and articles to check a few facts. ...

"AP--3rd-Graders Arrested for Their Drawings Two boys ages 9 and 10 in Ocala, Fla., have been arrested and charged with a second-degree felony for making primitive pencil-and-crayon stick figure drawings on scrap paper that depicted a 10-year-old classmate being stabbed and hung, reports The Associated Press. Police took the children, who are special education students, out of school in handcuffs. The official charge: Making a written threat to kill or harm another person. The two hav...

post deleted Is this the right way to do this? I've never had to do it.

When I heard that Johnny Carson had passed on, it stunned me more than I thought it would have. When I was little, I used to stay up with my mom and watch The Tonight Show, and always liked Johnny, even though I didn't get all the jokes. Even when I got older and had school in the morning, I would often (if I could weasel it out of her) stay up just to watch the monologue, a practice which continues to this day; I have to at least watch Jay's opening few minutes. I miss the opening bars ...

Thanks to recent articles by terpfan1980(on "Politics") and Gideon MacLeish (on "Religion"), we've been informed of Michael Newdow's latest assault on the Pledge of Allegience, a new offensive which would seem to involve others that he has somehow convinced to follow his lead. I've been posting comments on both threads, and must say that some of the arguments put forth by the resistance I've seen are fairly compelling. The debate has been kind of fun, if a little frustrating. However, ...

I heard on the radio this morning that the Rabbi (I'm sad to say I came into the room a couple seconds too late to get his name) who introduced Madonna, and through her, Britney Spears and many others to the wonders of Kaballah, recently made a wonderfully profound and enlightening statement. It seems that the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust died because they were not practitioners of Kaballah. Yes, that's right; they died not because their persecutors wanted them, as ...

A new Superman movie will be released in 2006. The primary roles and the actors filling those roles are as follows: Lex Luthor: Kevin Spacey Lois Lane: Kate Bosworth Superman/ Clark Kent: Brad Rue (?) The actor playing Superman is an unknown soap opera actor who I've never heard of. I'm actually glad to hear this, as it's fitting. This was the route they took when they cast Christopher Reeve in the 1978 movie version. For those of my generation and later, Reeve WAS Superman. I can...

Tsunami Survivors Mob U.S. Aid Copters By DENIS D. GRAY ABOARD THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (AP) - Desperate, homeless villagers on the tsunami-ravaged island of Sumatra mobbed American helicopters carrying aid Saturday as the U.S. military launched its largest operation in the region since the Vietnam War, ferrying food and other emergency relief to survivors across the disaster zone. From dawn until sunset on New Year's Day, 12 Seahawk helicopters shuttled supplies and advance teams fr...

This is a hearty MERRY CHRISTMAS to all my fellow JUers. I know, I know.....many of you don't believe in or celebrate Christmas.....fine. Just please accept it in the spirit in which it is offered, okay? In honor of the holiday, I offer the lyirics to one of my favorite Christmas tunes from childhood: Snoopy's Christmas --by The Royal Guardsmen The news had come out in the First World War---the bloody Red Baron was flyin' once more. The Allied Command ignored all of its m...

My father, Larry, saw his last Christmas in 2001. At his funeral, I related the following tale as part a eulogy. My dad had a unique sense of humor. One Christmas morning, when I was six or seven, I jumped out of bed at some ungodly hour and crept down the stairs to begin the day's festivities. Now, it's important to note here that, in my house, Santa did not wrap his presents; he was a busy man, of course, and had no time to wrap all those toys and presents for every kid in the world,...

The following article is based freely on a reply I made to someone on a post: Every so often, I see on here some comment by a foreign national or by a self-loathing, America-last, apologist US-born liberal, dumping on Americans for our supposed "arrogance". How we're arrogant doesn't always come up, but it seems we just are. Well, as I've said several times before.....why shouldn't we be? After all, we've saved the world three times in the last hundred years alone. From 1917 to 1991, ...

I got a little curious about the origins of this relatively recent addition to the holiday season, and did a little research. I took this from Wizblog: ~~~"Considering Kwanzaa Richard J. Rosendall takes a thoughtful and candid look at this relatively new celebration in a Front Page Magazine article. In the course of explaining the origins of Kwanzaa and its founding principles, Rosendall seems to ask just what exactly is being "celebrated" here, and why: My first impression of Kwan...

Got some bad news when I went in to work today; the owner has sold the place, and Monday will be our last day. On top of that, the new owner won't be keeping it as a restaurant, after all. It's going to be a tobacco shop. So, unless I want to sell smokes ( I wouldn't want to do that anyway....my dad died of lung cancer) and rolling papers for a lot less money, I'm out of a job. And at Christmas, nonetheless. The owner has been trying to sell it for some time, I have, in all fairness, to adm...

"Random Acts of Badness" is a book, the autobiography Danny Bonaduce, that I picked up for a buck at the dollar store. Bonaduce, as some of you may recall, got his break in acting at a young age playing the chubby, redheaded drummer "Danny Partridge" in "The Partridge Family" from 1970-74. He later gained a reputation as the "poster boy for child stars gone bad". He at present, at the time the book was published, at least, works as a successful radio personality. He is, at time of publishin...

As promised, I have decided to expand on my article and write this little history of the gay man whom I called "Mike", an abrasive co-worker of mine I described in the previous post. Mike, when he first started working with us, was a nice, reserved young man of 19; responsible, caring, very religious and involved in his church, and fun to be around. He was engaged to be married to a nice young lady he'd been with since High School (none of us expected it to work out, of course, since she ...