current events

I just read over on USAToday that new Marriott hotels are no longer offering adult pay-per-view films. If I read it correctly, they’re not offering pay-per-view, period–switching over to some sort of internet-based option, instead. Why is this noteworthy? Well, for one thing, it’s noteworthy because up to this point, no other large hotel chain has done this. (Omni, which owns about 50 hotels, did it back in 1999.) For another thing, Marriott was started and is owned by a Mormon, and I’ve always found it curious that they would tacitly endorse pornography–even profit off it. My brother used to

I’ve been following the trial of Brian David Mitchell fairly closely over the last few weeks. For those of you who don’t know, he’s the guy who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart from her room over eight years ago. She was a fourteen year old girl living a normal life with her family in Utah, and overnight she became the essential slave of this psycho and his wife. I was living in Utah at the time, and I don’t know about the rest of the country, but her disappearance was huge news there. I remember after a few months thinking she was