I feel like modern spins on Shakespeare are always kind of dumb. You can modern it up a bit, but only to the mid-1800s or so. After that it just gets weird, like that Romeo and Juliet with DiCaprio in it.

A lot of the US military expenditures are on stuff we'll never use though, and there are militaries that are much larger than the US's based on personnel. If you count reserve forces, the US military is smaller than those of China, India, Russia, South Korea, and Vietnam. I would also argue that the size of the…

I loved Lincoln in the Bardo, but I can understand why some people, even those who like his short stories, can't stand it. About half of it is written in excerpts from contemporary writings about Lincoln and his times: journal entries, books, newspaper articles, and the like (I didn't do any research on this, but…

Huh? He was born in '72 though

Calling the US a hegemon at this point in history might be a bit of a stretch.

The English do not know what's up with cold drinks. I once explained what lemonade was to an Englishman and his response was "Why would anyone drink that?"

I think part of it is because the kinks' big hits are super un-poppy, either by being manic, fuzzed-out garage rock (i.e. You Really Got Me) or by running strongly against the social norms of the time (Lola). That stuff is obviously great but I think it is tough for a lot of people to make the jump from the kinks…

He does seem to do a lot of historical military/espionage type stuff which would tend to skew male in any director's hands.

It's important to realize that this story is conflating two different issues. One issue is moving P.S.452 into the old P.S. 191 building 16 blocks away from where it currently is. The second issue is redrawing the catchment zones for the schools. The WNYC story that the Slate story links to is much clearer (and…

Janet?

The most relevant passage:

Damn. Looks like we've got to start growing more beans.

A pill could certainly provide all the vitamins you need, as we need most of them in relatively small amounts. But we need nutrients, too, and a pill would be too small to fit all of those into it. Mostly that's carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus so that our bodies can build proteins and fats and amino acids, and you…

Food deserts likely are worse, but at least according to this write-up, the study controlled for diet so that wouldn't explain the difference.

You know how EPCOT is what people in the 60s thought the 80s would be like? Well this is what people in the 90s thought right now would be like.

Vermin Supreme?

Were you not aware that Bert, Big Bird, and Oscar the Grouch have dual citizenship?

Sure they are. "Centrist" is defined by being in between "conservative" and "liberal," so it doesn't make sense to describe someone as conservative and centrist. While you can be a conservative Democrat you can't be a hard-line Democrat and a conservative, because describing someone as a hard-line Democrat implies…

I saw one of the Allman shows in their last run at the Beacon, but Gregg wasn't there because he had bronchitis. It was still a great show, though. Warren Haynes has a voice that fits in pretty will with their stuff, and Susan Tedeschi did 5-6 songs, too. And of course they played for like 3 and a half hours or…

Has anyone said Johnny Cash at San Quentin, yet? I mean, obviously the audience didn't get there by buying tickets, but seeing that same show somewhere else would be great.