The site for ranting and reporting by John Masters
I watched most of an excellent and touching Frontline episode last night on PBS. It was called The Undertaking. Thomas Lynch is a writer and poet in a small town in Michigan, and he’s also a funeral director. His family has been caring for the dead in his hometown for three generations. Given my background, this certainly caught my attention. I was not disappointed.
Read moreThe film is based on Mariane Pearl’s account of the terrifying and unforgettable story of her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl’s life and death.
Read moreHigh-school student Sam Witwicky buys his first car, who is actually the Autobot Bumblebee. Bumblebee defends Sam and his girlfriend Mikaela Banes from the Decepticon Barricade, before the other Autobots arrive on Earth. They are searching for the Allspark, and the war on Earth heats up as the Decepticons attack a United States military base in Qatar. Sam and Mikaela are taken by the top-secret agency Sector 7 to help stop the Decepticons, but when they learn the agency also intends to destroy the Autobots, they formulate their own plan to save the world.
Read moreAccording to a report in the USAToday, the Terrorist Watchlist now contains 755,000 names. Approximately 200,000 names have been added each year since 2004. Obviously this raises a ton of concerns by those interested in civil liberties. The list is quickly headed to a million, and it’s shear size makes it impossible to use it effectively.
Read moreA Reuters report by John Hurdle reports that the Kansas based Westboro Baptist Church has been ordered to pay $2.9 million in compensatory damages to the family of a gay marine killed in Iraq. They had cheered and protested at his funeral, as they have done at many of the funerals for soldiers killed in the war, claiming it to be God’s vengeance on America for the way it treats them, and for letting gay people live here.
Read moreThis is a collection of news items for the week ending October 28, 2007. It includes stories of drunken elephants, a necrophilia plot in Citrus County, and a classic trash to treasure story.
Read moreI read an article on MSNBC a few days back about a small but growing practice of “home funerals.” It’s touted as a way for people to reclaim their death rituals. Having been a funeral director in the past, the title certainly caught my eye.
Read moreWhen three small town National Guardsmen bound for Iraq are unknowingly dropped into Mexico, their confusion leads them to “liberate” a small village from a band of corrupt Federales.
Read moreA NASA astronaut (Thornton), forced to retire years earlier so he could save his family farm, has never given up his dream of space travel and looks to build his own rocket, despite the government’s threats to stop him.
Read moreWhen a terrorist bomb detonates inside a Western housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, an international incident is ignited. While diplomats slowly debate equations of territorialism, FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) quickly assembles an elite team (Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, and Jason Bateman) and negotiates a secret five-day trip into Saudi Arabia to locate the madman behind the bombing. Upon landing in the desert kingdom, however, Fleury and his team discover Saudi authorities suspicious and unwelcoming of American interlopers into what they consider a local matter.
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