PopcornWelcome to New-Look Monday. The blog has changed style a little, but all the original material is still here and more to come this week and beyond.

I’ve been keeping up on various stories today, including Artie Lange coming back from vacation on the Stern show today and admitting he’s in rehab for heroin addiction, Bernie Mac dying of complications from pneumonia, and the damned Olympics which I hate. Also:

Kevin Yuill argues against allowing concealed weapons on campuses. I disagree wholeheartedly, and will respond further tomorrow here on this blog.

An LA Times opinion piece makes much ado of the fact that gasoline is more affordable now than it was in the early 1960s. This makes no difference, however, to the real issue which is that American lifestyles are now designed around and reliant upon the lower prices of gasoline since then, and that the real crunch is upon us now. Why exactly it matters how things were in the 1960s isn’t ever made clear by the authors of the piece; if you ask me it seems entirely irrelevant.

An open thread in the Guardian asks for responses to the question: “A couple have been told by their council to stop feeding birds in their own garden. But is feeding birds a human right?” I think if the birds have landed on their own property, they should be able to feed them or blow them to smithereens if they wish. Is that a good response?

And another Guardian poll asks whether popcorn should be banned from movie theaters by the owners: 34 percent of the dickhead readers of the Guardian say it should, adequately revealing for us all the morons that are responsible for making that paper what it is.

More later…. welcome back!