Shakespearean Monologue

Relatively recently, I watched last year's film adaptation of Coriolanus.  As a general rule, I strive to read the source material before I see a movie based on any previously written work, but had not done so with Coriolanus, nor have I seen a performance of the play. Because of that, I cannot say with any qualification how good the movie is as an adaptation. As a movie, however, I must say that I enjoyed it, and I think that it is an auspicious directorial debut by Ralph (it's actually pronounced "Rafe") Fiennes, who also gave a hell of a performance as the titular tragic hero. But that is not really what I want to write about. Instead, I would like to bring up the inevitable complaints about the movie's use of antiquated language.

Sometimes, after seeing a movie, I'll go onto its IMDb page and see what other people thought about it. And with Coriolanus, a lot of the discussion was about "ye olde" English language. This didn't surprise me, because it is a rather common complaint about movies adapted from Shakespeare. For some reason, however, the complaints about Coriolanus struck a nerve. Most likely it was due to the inanity of some of them. The language was too out of place in the action scenes; the language made the film too difficult to follow; who the hell talks like that? One poster actually suggested that the movie's dialogue should have been "modern", but that the Coriolanus character would like to quote Shakespeare, which, if you realize that Coriolanus, in a movie titled Coriolanus, would be "quoting" lines given by a character also named Coriolanus, from a Shakespearean play also named Coriolanus, is something bizarrely meta.

I sympathize with people who have difficulty understanding Shakespeare. Watching a play of his, or a movie based on a play, can be very demanding on one's attention and interpretive ability. But criticizing an adaptation of Shakespeare for containing Shakespearean language betrays a certain callowness.

I am not an expert on Shakespeare. I have only read around a third of his plays. By no means do I think everything he wrote was a masterpiece. In fact, some of his plays are outright bad. (I'm looking at you, Two Gentlemen of Verona...) Sympathy aside, however, I have to make the following point boldly (and I mean that literally):

You cannot separate Shakespeare's words from his works.

Shakespeare wrote plays. If you are trying to adapt a Shakespearean play into a movie, and maintain a sense of it still being Shakespeare, it makes no sense to gut the language. Oh, you might (and probably should) abridge the play, or maybe alter some lines to make them easier to understand, but, if you do it right, the lyrical and metric qualities of the play's language will remain largely intact, and your adaptation will be suitably Shakespearean.

In an aside to this (suitable for a discussion on Shakespeare), there is something that may not be all that realized by the lay consumer of Shakespeare (if such a thing exists): many of his plays are derived from stories and plays previously written or recorded by other people. So, unless an adaptation is of one of his few wholly original works, it could conceivably be argued that it would be just as much an adaptation of the source material Shakespeare used.

There have been numerous adaptations of Shakespeare that have discarded his use of language. The musicals West Side Story and Kiss Me, Kate obviously discard his words and significantly alter the plays (Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew, respectively) in order to make the transition to the stage musical medium. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think everyone would agree with me that neither musical can be called Shakespeare. Likewise, to counter the bizarrely meta suggestion mentioned above, 10 Things I Hate About You, also a modernized adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, would hardly be Shakespearean even if Patrick Verona quoted Petruchio. In fact, it would be a bit odd.

You lie, in faith; for you are call'd plain Kate,

And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst;

But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom,

Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate,

For dainties are all cates: and therefore, Kate,

Take this of me, Kate of my consolation;

Horror-thon: Part II - Transylvanian Terror

The first two films I watched for my Oktoberfest of Horror were two versions of Dracula, the 1931 classic starring Bela Lugosi and the 1992 movie Bram Stoker's Dracula, starring Gary Oldman.

As someone who has read the book,  I must say that the '31 adaptation doesn't stand up to the novel. In fact, that version of Dracula wasn't technically based off of the novel itself, but was instead the adaptation of a play based off of the book. It is one of the downsides of the movie that the plot is much too simplified. Granted, it dates back to the 1930s, when movie norms were quite different from what they are now, but when I compare the movie with the novel, I can't help but notice certain jarring simplifications. Easily the most unsettling is the treatment of the "White Lady." The audience is shown that one of Dracula's victims has become a vampire, and is preying on children. And then?.... Nothing. The main plot line continues on without any resolution whatsoever of what you would think would be an important issue. After all, this only means that there's a second vampire loose in London.

On the plus side, however, there is the superb performance of Bela Lugosi, who effuses a wonderfully sinister charm and charisma. It is commonly said that Lugosi, a Hungarian, had to learn his lines phonetically because he didn't speak English when the movie was made. This is actually incorrect, although there is an element of truth to it, as Lugosi had played Dracula for years in the stage version mentioned above and had to learn his lines phonetically because of his then-poor English.

The 1991 version adheres more closely to the novel. It still has multiple alterations, however, but it is far from the simple story of the original movie.  Perhaps the alteration that I most like is the movie's introduction, which provides the origin story of the dark count. In fact, the overall arc of the movies suggests that Dracula is not so much a horror villain as a tragic character, a man who, when confronted with immeasurable and eternal loss, chose to renounce both his soul and humanity, and suffers the consequences over the following centuries.

Definitely an old man...

Another distinction of this version is its quite overt sexuality. I generally think it works on multiple levels. It taps into the longstanding perception that, in the stuffy Victorian age, sexuality was tantamount to depravity. And few things are as depraved as the depiction of the undead slacking their lust for the living (and not just for their blood...).  Then there's the juxtaposition of the sexually repressed Jonathan, generally considered the hero of the story, with the aggressively sexual Dracula, which further questions the distinction between the living and the dead.

It goes without saying that Gary Oldman is fantastic as Dracula, and Anthony Hopkins is a riot to watch as a callously straight-forward Van Helsing. Keanu Reeves, on the other hand, is cringe-inducing, mostly because of his horrific attempt to use a British accent. Among other butcheries, he possibly committed the most laughable mispronunciation of Budapest, "Byudapest," during a voice-over narration. I don't know what Francis Ford Coppola was thinking when he cast him.

Horror-thon

In response to a complaint that I didn't have anything to blog about, a friend suggested that I blog about my recent spate of horror movie watching. The month of October has two inconveniently contradictory realities for students (or at least me): one, the existence of midterm exams and papers, and two, the overwhelming desire to sit around watching horror movies, at the likely expense of performing well on aforementioned midterms. As someone who has loved horror movies since I was a pre-teen, I've been spending a bit too much time on the latter, but I don't care.

Unfortunately, my ability to watch my favorite horror movies has been hampered by my recent severing of ties with Netflix's DVD mailing service, which means I'm limited to whatever's available on instant viewing, Hulu, or movies that I own. Unfortunately, this means I can't watch films like Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Halloween (1978), Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Friday the 13th (1980), Ringu (1998), and Ju-On (2003). 

Nevertheless, I have made the best of a disappointing situation. So far this month, I've watched twelve horror movies, for a current average of one a day. (I've also had one in-class midterm, but the horror movies are obviously more important...) They are: Dracula (1931), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), The Fog (1980), The Thing (1982), The Lost Boys (1987), The Exorcist (1973), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), The Evil Dead (1981), An American Werewolf in London (1981), The Howling (1981), Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), and Scream (1996). I will be writing blog posts about most, if not all, of them and other horror movies in the near future...

Single blog in search of a name

So, after yet another unintended hiatus, I've decided to tweak my blog, hoping that it might spur a burst of creativity. Part of this blog renovation is a change in name. Unfortunately, it's taking me a while to thing of something I like (the front-runner was part of a quote from Les Misérables, but I just wasn't satisfied with it), so for the time being this will be The Blog With No Name.

If any of you have any suggestions, please, by all means, let me know.

Plans for the summer

So, my semester is over and I have almost four months before things pick up again in late August. I've been thinking about what I want to do in that period of time. Obviously, I'm going to be doing a lot of reading about Yemen, which is the topic of my thesis. I expect, however, that I'll still have a lot of additional time to spend when I'm not researching. So, here are some of my plans for the summer:

-Read for fun. One of the things that I love about breaks is the free time I have for reading. Within the last 24 hours, for example, I read almost 150 pages of Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes, which I consequently finished.
-Write (which includes contributing to this blog). I really want to try to write more for fun. I'm planning some blog posts, including one on Unfamiliar Fishes. I also want to work on some more substantial stuff, such as a paper giving a psycho-dynamic analysis of the reaction to Osama bin Laden's death. And, of course, I'd like to write some creative stuff too.
-Work on foreign language skills. I'm going to try to improve my Arabic and French skills over the summer. Also, I might take a GLN course depending on what they're offering this summer.
-Lose weight. Two summers ago, I lost about thirty pounds without really trying. I'm hoping that if I actually made an effort, I might lose ten or maybe twenty more. Probably not, but I'm going to try.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

So, Saturday night I finally forced myself to watch The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day on Netflix. It appears that there's a reason why it sat in my queue for months.

Simply put, it was awful. I'll be honest and admit that the first Boondock Saints isn't a particularly good film, but it's a lot of fun to watch. Considering that there was some ten years between the films, the second one should have been much better.

I'll put a spoiler warning in case any of you want to watch this festering turd of a movie.

So, the film starts out with the MacManus boys and their dad in Ireland, and judging by their hirsute visages, 1) they've been there for a while, and 2) there aren't any razors on the Emerald Isle.

The boys find out that they've been framed for the murder of a priest, and come back to America to bring the vengeance of the Lord upon anyone connected with the crime.

The actual killer, a hired gun who is 5' 5", is obsessed with his lack of height. Pretty much half of his screen time is him silently gauging how short he is. It's pointless and annoying.

There are also a myriad of flashbacks and dream sequences. The primary purpose of which apparently is to provide an excuse to have the deceased Rocco make an appearance. Also pointless and annoying.

There are gun fights, and (generally lame) wisecracks, and a disturbing amount visible of an overweight man. Judd Nelson plays the son of Papa Joe Yakavetta, which is kinda weird since he's two years older than Carlos Rota.

An insufferably long story short, it turns out that Noah, the MacManus' father, who was simply known as "Il Duce" in the first movie, is being lured back to America by an old friend of his played by Peter Fonda. This friend helped Noah become the badass assassin he was in the first movie, and then arranged for his incarceration. The background for this showdown was provided throughout the film by additional flashbacks that appeared to be a tacky imitation of The Godfather Part II. In my opinion, the back-story, which casts Noah as a vigilante killer of Mafiosos, doesn't seem to mesh with the first film, which implies that he's a Mafia hit-man with a moral code.

Anyway, a violent shootout precedes the film's ending, which suggests that there may be another sequel in the works. Saints preserve us from that day.

Thoughts on "Breaking the Real Axis of Evil"

I recently read “Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World’s Last Dictator’s by 2025” by former ambassador Mark Palmer. It’s an interesting book, and I more or less agree with its basic premise that the world would be a better place without dictatorships, and I thought that many ideas for bring about such a world are interesting. I do have some quibbles with the book however.

Misrepresentation (or, more charitably, misinterpretation)

-Palmer inexplicably claims that “more women have led Islamic countries than have led non-Islamic democracies….” Honestly, I have no idea what math Palmer is using. By 2003, the year the book was written, there had been one female head of state and six female heads of government of Islamic states. What Palmer means by female leaders of non-Islamic democracies could be tricky, since he may mean women who were elected rather than appointed. I personally don’t think that there should be a difference given the fact that either way the transfer of power would be based upon a rule of law. However, to rattle off just a few of the female heads of government who were elected before 2003: Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Corazon Aquino, Helen Clark, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Mireya Moscoso, Violeta Chamorro, and Eugenia Charles.

-In his afterword, written in 2005, Palmer writes about Russia backsliding into Not Free status. He claims that Putin’s popularity in Russia is in decline as a result. I think this is blatantly wishful thinking on Palmer’s part. While there has been a steady opposition to Putin in Russia, a vast majority of Russians support him and have supported him throughout his presidency and premiership.

Over-simplifications

-Palmer writes only a couple of paragraphs on Palestine, which (justifiably) criticize Yasser Arafat, as well as call for elections in Palestine. While the government of the Palestinian Authority has some responsibility for the poor lot of Palestinians, I would argue that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is more to blame. Additionally, Palmer failed to even mention Hamas, let alone anticipate its victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections.

-In what was essentially a throwaway sentence, Palmer writes that the issue of Kashmir will only be resolved when Pakistan is democratic. This may, in essence, be true, as a dictatorship would be likely to use the conflict to shore up support among Pakistanis. Considering, however, that there have been periods of democratic rule in Pakistan which did not resolve the conflict, it appears that merely hoping that democracy will end the problem is dangerously simplistic.

-Palmer pays little attention to the problem of democratization in multi-ethnic or multi-sectarian states. As we have seen in Iraq and Lebanon, democratic government can result in inter-group clashes, where differences are used for political advantage, or even result in merciless violence.

-Dictatorship is typically considered to be the absolute rule by one individual. Palmer reinforces this conceptualization by frequently referring to the forty-five individuals who are the world’s “least wanted.” A few of these dictatorships, however, are hardly run by individuals. Some, while they may have individual figures who represent the government, are in fact run by groups of people, such as some single-party governments and military juntas. Palmer seems to recognize this by dividing the dictatorships into typologies, including military dictatorships and one-party dictatorships, but he persists in identifying the regimes with single individuals.

Random acts of bizarreness

-Palmer arbitrarily picks a single warlord as Somalia’s “dictator” to be ousted. Google "Somalia" if you don't understand how ridiculous this is.

-Palmer criticizes Bhutan’s then-king for cracking down on pro-democracy activists. This may be true, and I’m not an expert on Bhutan, but I find this behavior to be rather odd since a few years later the king abdicated in favor of his son, and, at the same time, made Bhutan a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament. From what I’ve gathered, throughout the ’90s and ’00s, Bhutan actually was preparing for the transition into democracy despite the apathy that the Bhutanese had for self-government.

-Palmer lumps the central Asian –stans in with the Middle East, as well as North African states, and calls them all the Greater Middle East. I’ll admit that the term “Middle East” is pretty arbitrary, as well as the group of countries that are included in it, but creating a “Greater Middle East” makes even less sense. The countries involved are hardly all that similar, especially the central Asian states when compared to the Arab states.

Honest disagreement

-Palmer, in his prescription for ousting Iran’s dictator, argues that the United States has taken the wrong lesson from the American-backed 1953 coup: that Iranians don’t appreciate our involvement in Iranian domestic affairs. Instead, Palmer argues, the lesson should be that the US has influence in Iran; it just needs to use it to support Iranian democrats. I disagree. Pretty much all of the literature I have read on Iran states that, in general Iranians love Americans, as well as many of the ideals of America, but have a deep distrust, even dislike, for the American government. Openly aligning ourselves with Iranian democrats is probably the best way to ensure that they are viewed with skepticism by the Iranian population as a whole.

Thoughts on this week's Eagle

So, this week's issue of The Eagle came out today. I haven't read all of it, but I have some brief thoughts on somethings I've noticed. There wasn't a correction for the Nobel Peace Prize inaccuracy last week, so odds are no one told them about it. I'll have to email them about it.

There were some really poor word choices in the opinion section. One opinion piece mentioned "discriminate policies," as opposed to "discriminatory policies." Another piece talks about "the untenable position where we get sick and the Health Center is... closed...." That position is hardly "untenable." Unenviable, perhaps, but not untenable. The thing that really aggravates me about that is that this was a staff editorial. The editorial staff should know better.

Favorite Eagle Rant this week: "The worst thing about living on America's #1 Most Politically Active Campus is listening to drunk Republicans rant about economics

Ragging on AU's rag

Having edited two sections of a student newspaper, I understand that such a publication can be difficult to put together. But AU's student newspaper, The Eagle, is surprisingly disappointing. It does have a nice tabloid format, as well as a decent variety of stories, but overall, I have to say that it's quite mediocre. Pretty much every week there are corrections for the previous issue.

This last week, they failed to notice that a study abroad student in London who contributed an article mistakenly wrote that her economics professor recently received the Nobel Peace Prize. Consider the fact that the Nobel Prize in Economics is not even given by the same organization as the Peace Prize, which went to an imprisoned Chinese dissident, and I think you can grasp how incompetent their editors and copy-editors are.

There has, however, been an entertaining debate between the AU STAND Coalition and AU Students for Life over whether abortion in the U.S. is genocide. It started when AU Students for Life displayed signs listing abortion as a genocide along with Rwanda, Darfur, and the Holocaust. STAND took umbrage to this, and wrote a letter to the editor pointing out that abortion does not meet the actual definition of genocide. AU Students for Life responded the next week with their own letter to the editor, which said that abortion can be considered genocide, if you broadly define genocide "as violence resulting from the dehumanization of a class of people in a society." The letter also argued that unborn children are discriminated against "because of their age and development level."

As someone who has actually studied genocide and international law, I'm going to have to say that AU Students for Life is way (read: waaaaay) off base. They are blurring the meaning of genocide. The essential definition of genocide is very clear. Redefining it broadly, like AU Students for Life is trying to do, undermines the concept of the crime. Simply put, genocide is systematic, and its objective is to destroy, in whole or in part, a distinct national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Terminating a pregnancy does not meet either of these criteria. It is an individual choice, not a concerted, systematic campaign. And an abortion is performed not because of who the unborn child is, but because a woman has decided that she does not want to give birth for some personal reason.

Anyway, one thing that I do like about The Eagle are the Eagle Rants, which are short statements from readers about a variety of topics. One last week complained about The Eagle mistakenly using a quotation mark for an abbreviated year instead of an apostrophe, as is correct. I am not alone....

Attack of the killer commute (a.k.a. my life so far)

Well, I'm about to start week five of graduate school. I'm enjoying it so far. Unfortunately, the commute is killing me. Each day I go to school, it takes me about three and a half hours all together. Needless to say, I'm hoping to find an apartment soon. The biggest problem I'm having is that most days I'm either too busy or too tired to apartment hunt.

I'm finding it much easier to meet people than during the beginning of my undergrad. There was a welcome event for my program on Friday. Afterward, a huge group of students and some faculty and staff went to a place called Guapo's. I had never been there before, but apparently that's the place that IPCR people hang out. Anyway, I had a good time talking with classmates.

Afterwards, I had a horrible drive to Arlington to go to a friend's birthday party. It's hardly a new criticism, but Washington is poorly designed. What should have taken me 15 minutes took about an hour because I kept missing turns and taking wrong turns. The signs in DC in particular should be done differently because they are so hard to see at night. They should be bigger, or there should be signs before the intersections, like in Baltimore.

Well, that's more or less my life so far. I'll probably have something more interesting to post later.

Want small government? Go to Somalia...

Apparently some rational people infiltrated a tea party in Boston. Some of their signs are pretty awesome. Below are two of my favorites.

End(?) of hiatus...

So, it's been several months since I've last posted. I keep having ideas, but never follow through with them. Among the (generally untimely) posts I might end up writing include:

-Why I hate Watchmen (the movie, of course)
-Why I hate V for Vendetta (the movie, of course)
-Why I hate Avatar (a trend? I think so...)
-An ongoing series showing how I, as a snobby film-goer, might be spared from crappy movies
-The quality problems that are inherent in keeping 24 "exciting" (a completely moot point since it's now cancelled)
-The social messages that Pixar is brainwashing your children with.

As you might notice, I've made a few minor changes to the blog. I've ditched the widget(?) that connected to my Twitter account, as I've lapsed into Twitter neglect. I have, however, included a rather ill-fitting Tumblr widget in its place, as I consider Tumber to have much more potential than Twitter. By which, I mean that I'll probably stop using it in six months or so.

In personal developments, I have been accepted into graduate school, specifically American University's School of International Service. You probably cannot tell, but I'm quite excited.

Anyway... I am currently reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. They're quite interesting, in my opinion, though he does occasionally write something that seems bizarrely short and devoid of context. It probably would have been good to find an edition with some form of commentary on them. I suppose that's yet another failing of the Great Books series.

AMC vs. TCM

Those of you who know me know that I look down on AMC in its current manifestation. The movie choices, the constant repetition of movies, the original television shows (though they are quite good), and the commercials (especially the ones for "male enhancement" products) all demonstrate to me that AMC is no longer the channel of American Movie Classics. To better analyze AMC, I created a scatter plot graph comparing the movie being shown this week on AMC and TCM.



Now, I'm not a mathematician or a statistician, I am fairly certain that when we look at this graph, we're supposed to ask, What does this tell us? So, what does this tell us? Not a whole lot. There are, however, a few things that can be inferred from the graph.

One: TCM is showing a larger selection of movies, 91 (one movie was not placed on the graph because it had no ratings on IMDb), than AMC, 47. The most likely reason for this is the fact that AMC's weekly schedule is cluttered with television shows, repeated movies and television shows, and penile growth commercials. Of course, the repeated movies are the worst as they take up the most scheduling time and keep AMC from supplying additional movies during the week.

Two: TCM's movie selection spans a greater length of time than AMC's, with selections spanning 71 years of cinema, from 1914 to 1982. AMC's, on the other hand, is representative of only 56 years, from 1950 to 2006. Possible reasons for this difference is that TCM can afford a wider diversity of movies. I make this assumption because of the commercial-free nature of TCM's movies, which implies that TCM doesn't need money from advertisers. Additionally, because AMC does run commercials, it will need to run movies that advertisers will want to run commercials during. Generally, these movies will be somewhat newer and/or more action-oriented, at least during the day.

Three: Interestingly, AMC's trendline implies that movie quality goes down the older the movie shown while TCM's trendline implies the opposite. My guess for why this is true is that TCM has a larger share of the rights to older movies, which restricts AMC's abilities to obtain the rights to quality movies from the '80s (I use the word "quality" loosely when describing '80s movies). Of course, as mentioned earlier, AMC's demand for older movies might not be that strong because of advertising. I do think, however, that more than one week's data is needed to see if the trendlines remain consistent.

There are some issues with the scatter plot. Probably the most significant of these is the use of IMDb ratings, which can be unstable and a bit susceptible to manipulation, as last year's ratings battle between fans of The Godfather and The Dark Knight shows. Particularly unstable are movies that don't have a lot of ratings, which is the case with quite a few older movies.

The Flyer editorial: Will the real leader of the GOP please stand up? (backdated)

I had some fun writing this editorial.

Originally published in The Flyer on March 10th, 2009.

Link to story on The Flyer's web site
----------------------

Who's the Boss?

The Flyer editorial: We're not socialists yet (backdated)

Personally, I originally thought that this editorial could have been better, but I heard a few compliments about it, including from my boss, the Honors Program Director, whose opinion of it I was rather grateful to hear.

Originally published in The Flyer on February 24th, 2009.

-----------------------------------------------------

During the recent debate over the Obama administration’s stimulus package, the term "socialism" was bandied about both by some supporters and detractors. On a recent cover, Newsweek declared that "We Are All Socialists Now," while conservative critics attempted to rally opposition to the stimulus by ascribing the dreaded S word to it.... (Link to the article on The Flyer's website.)

The Iconography of Barack Obama

Seriously, this is a little ridiculous. Not to mention blatantly obvious.

The Flyer editorial: No one is perfect (backdated)

When I first finished this, I thought it was so-so, but a friend of mine loved it and mentioned how good it was several times after it was published. I've come around to her line of thinking and approve of the editorial now.

Originally published in The Flyer on February 10th, 2009.

----------------------------------------------

A picture was published recently of swimmer Michael Phelps smoking out of a bong at a college party last November. Phelps admitted that he was using marijuana in the picture and apologized for his "bad judgment." So far, as a consequence of his actions, Phelps was dropped as a spokesman for Kellogg’s, USA Swimming barred him from competition for three months and he may face criminal charges. In addition, parents bemoan the failings of a role model for children. The controversy does, however, raise some important questions.... (Link to article on The Flyer's website.)

The crux of my decision in Smith v. Alaska

Last spring, I took a class on constitutional law, the curriculum of which included a moot court. The case, Smith v. Alaska involved the arrest and conviction of Smith, a teenage male, who was older than the age of consent, for statutory rape due to a sexual relationship he had with a teenage male, who was younger than the age of consent. The complicating issue here is that under a hypothetical Alaskan statute, there is a "Romeo and Juliet" exception to the statutory rape law which legalizes relationships if the individuals are within a certain difference in age. Smith and his partner were within this age difference, however, the wording of the statute implies that the exception only applies to heterosexual relations. So, what does the constitution have to say about it? Well, here is the third (and best) section of my decision along with the conclusion.

The Flyer editorial - Black Friday trampling death sign of lost holiday meaning (backdated)

This is another of my favorite editorials.
Originally printed in The Flyer on Dec. 09, 2008.
---------------------
The day after Thanksgiving is the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season. Over the years, this day has become the crowning jewel in the commercialization of the holiday season, with hordes of shoppers massing outside stores hoping to take advantage of annual sales. The day is called Black Friday, traditionally because many retailers are now in the black ink of profits instead of the red ink of losses.... (Link to article.)

The Flyer editorial: Editor’s Corner - Government’s lack of foresight shown in Fannie and Freddie (backdated)

Originally printed in The Flyer on Sept. 16, 2008.
-------
On Sept. 8, the federal government announced that it would be placing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of the country’s largest mortgage lending companies, into a "conservatorship." This was done in an effort to calm the financial world and to ensure the continuing flow of capital into the mortgage market. The saddest part of the whole thing is that this did not need to happen.... (Link to article.)