Outside the Beltway

Before achieving astounding success, Steve Jobs had to experience disappointment and failure.

Chris Christie and Rahm Emanuel are being criticized for the brusque manner they handled questions about their children’s education.

Netflix will charge $7.99 for streaming video; it’s now a $2 add-on.

It’s often said that 1950s sex symbol Marilyn Monroe was a size 12. It just isn’t so.

Is it worse for a child to see pornography or graphic violence?

Jack Kirby’s heir are trying to posthumously renegotiate half-century old deals with Marvel.

Sunday afternoon musings on an electoral college sweeps.

James Arness, best known as the iconic Marshal Dillon on Gunsmoke, has died at 88.

Broadway actors are aiming a familiar lament at Hollywood stars: They’re taking our jobs!

Video entertainment is moving in two seemingly opposite directions simultaneously.

PP’s intensive effort to recast itself as a preventer of abortions doesn’t bear scrutiny.

I simply do not know enough expletives to adequately express how truly horrible this film was.

Why does Hermione Granger go to the library instead of just Googling it?

The Stuxnet virus that has set back the Iranian nuclear weapons program by several years at least appears to have originated as a joint project between the United States and Israel.

The cost/benefit ratio of tablet computers seems to be a bit…. lacking.

Just over 100 years after his death, Mark Twain’s two greatest novels are once again the subject of controversy.

Younger users are moving away from email as a way to communicate with others, and toward more instant forms of communication like text messaging and Twitter.

Castro banned “Sicko” for fear that ordinary Cubans would be up in arms seeing facilities that are not available to the vast majority of them.

According to a new Gallup poll, President Obama is not only less popular than George W. Bush, but the only president from the last half century less popular is Dick Nixon.

The American copyright system is broken. Cory Doctorow offers some useful suggestions for fixing it.

Jonah Goldberg has written a bad column. In this case, an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune headlined “Why is Assange still alive?”

Amazon is making the complete “I Love Lucy” television series — a whopping 5394 minutes of entertainment on 34 discs — available for one day only at $84.99.

Changing economic realities led to a role reversal: television is where you turn for smart entertainment, whereas the movies have become lowbrow.

Responding to the rant that got Rick Sanchez fired, Slate’s Brian Palmer investigates the question, “Do Jews Really Control the Media?” His short answer, “Maybe the movies, but not the news.”

Business is booming for box sets of 1960s acts remastered into the original mono.

The use of “partner” to describe someone with whom one is in a romantic relationship has interesting connotations.

Blockbuster is trying to reorganize itself, but it’s probably too late.

Attempts to capture the speech patterns of the American South in written dialogue should be approached with extreme caution.

Has the digitization of entertainment — DVRs, iPods, iPods, digital cameras, Netflix, and so forth — transformed it from fun into work?

The Obama’s are vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard again this year so, of course, it’s time for people to say stupid things about Presidential leisure activities again.

Does anybody here know anything about slide or film scanners or 8mm conversion?

Contrary to what you read on bumper stickers, retired Lt. Col William Astore argues that not every soldier is a hero. He’s right.

Inception has imposed itself as the film to beat for Best Picture and, I would guess, will become the lodestone for “mind movies” for a generation. Don’t miss it.

And we return, yet again, to specious comparisons to Hitler (and Lenin).

Journalists have been following Maxwell Scott’s advice since long before “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” was made.

After 69 years fighting crime in a star-spangled bathing suit, Wonder Woman will get a super hero costume.