The March of Progress Dept.:

"Museum Picks 'Star Wars' Over Franklin" reported by Michael Kunzelman at the Chicago Tribune's website.

Exactly what "science" is involved in the Star Wars movies? (Hint: Economics, if anything; at least insofar as Boston's Museum of Science is concerned.)

"Rural cellphone use may pose tumour risk" reported by Duncan Graham-Rowe at NewScientist.com.

Cell-phones causing brain cancer again. Ridiculous. Everyone knows that only Microsoft's optical mice cause brain tumors.

Post-modernism and "Vedic Science," or Erich von Däniken meets Fritjof Capra meets Jacques Derrida . . .

"Intellectual Treason" by Meera Nanda at New Humanist. (This is yet another one that's been sitting on the shelf--since January--but still very interesting . . . .)

Poem of the Day Dept.:

"Brahma" by Andrew Lang. Scottsman Lang is probably best recognized as the Victorian anthologist who compiled a charming, chromatically-named and seemingly endless series of fairy-tale collections--The Blue Fairy Book, The Green Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, and so on and on . . . . (Cricket and Hindu mythology, huh? Emerson this ain't.)

"ANGELOU SUED OVER POETRY," at contactmusic.com.

Poem of the Day Dept.:

"Who has not wished her husband into a cat?" by Christine Hamm at Exquisite Corpse.

"Learning the Thai sex trade" by Alex Renton at Prospect.

"The Lynne Stewart Trial" by David Cole at The Nation. (I'm digging up more posts that have been sitting in the "drafts" file at Blogger, some for quite awhile . . . .)

"Light and Solidarity" by Erin Mosely at In These Times.

"New Adventures in Censorship" by Emma Pearse at AlterNet.

"Defending Sweatshops: Too Much Logic, Too Little Evidence" by Richard Rothstein at Dissent.