MICHAEL CHABON’S UNUSED X-MEN SCRIPT. Interesting stuff, though a) his bad guy is too amorphous; b) too little agency on part of mutants, too much mutants being used as pawns, making decisions based on false (implanted) memories, that sort of thing. But this treatment stuck with me since the first time I read it, a while ago–there are several memorable images and good calls. Church of the Masses had more or less the same reaction as I did to “X2.”... Read more

FUN WITH REFERRER LOGS: Here are some of the many searches that brought people to my site in the past month or so. In rough order of my preference, least funny to funniest. Not all of these were Google searches, but I’m using Google links because that’s easiest. internal conflicts of dr. frankenstein (this one isn’t THAT weird, since I did write about it here) a world without promises LUX compete other soap in bangladesh articles on emotional branding in... Read more

SUBCONTRACTING CHILD ABUSE: “Specialty schools”–discipline farms for wayward youth–are going international to escape increasing US scrutiny and legal liability. This is one of those grim little stories I’ve been following for a while now; there are some truly terrifying stories that come out of these places. Even the ones that aren’t as insane as Straight, Inc. can be foul. NOTE: Not all “tough love”-type programs are bad. But there are so many awful ones out there (kids dying in Arizona... Read more

GOOD COLUMN ON PRISON RAPE –Rich Lowry’s syndicated column. He uses the same Dostoyevsky quote I used in my big piece on prison reform. Read more

NO MORE KESTON NEWS SERVICE. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh. OK, so scrap that part of my right-wingers and human rights post. This is really a loss. Read more

Now you look down and there’s blog on your hands All your frustrations watched out of control… Amy Welborn (no permalinks, you must scroll): Tons o’ relic-related links; plus this: “One intriguing moment came when Di Noia suggested that the emphasis on whether or not a doctrine is ‘infallible’ that followed the First Vatican Council has in some ways placed the accent on the authority of a teaching rather than its truth. He said that when the New York Times... Read more

BEYOND FRANKENSTEIN: THE PRESIDENTIAL BIOETHICS BOOKSHELF. My Jewish World Review column for this week. In which I boost the very cool bioethics commission bookshelf site. Read more

HEE!! Via Layman’s Logic. Read more

FINAL X-MEN 2 ROUND-UP POST: Guaranteed spoiler-free. Jacob Levy writes, “The movie is less Wolverine-Centric than the first one was (and much less Rogue-centric), leaving much more room for other characters.” I think this is the same as what I meant when I said none of the characters really got developed. A movie with that many explosions has limited time: It has to choose between focusing on some characters at the expense of others, or diffusing its focus among a... Read more

X-MEN 2 UPDATE: Awesome, brain-fodder-type post and comments thread from Will Wilkinson. I will add only the tiny comment that the extra-special mutants (the Xaviers and Jean Greys), plus the vast abilities of a bunch of small-time mutants who band together (Storm + Iceman + Pyro + Rogue, say), make plot and suspense extremely difficult. It’s really hard to come up with a believable reason that a mutant group could ever be foiled. You’ve got a guy who can teleport,... Read more