It’s beginning to look a lot like a Bollywood Christmas. [via Ellen Datlow]

Saw a couple of films noir recently, one a classic, the other more recent.Gun Crazy (1951) was the classic, and was a pure example of the film noir— or, as we called them in America, B pictures. Made on the cheap, full of actors you don’t remember ever seeing before, and filmed on the streets […]

I occasionally use this space to talk about the military or the government, usually to point out their errors.Seems only fair that I congratulate the Pentagon when it does something right.The Pentagon used a multimillion-dollar grant to fast track the burgeoning art of face transplants, in hopes of helping the 200 or so veterans who […]

Some years ago Kathy and I were in Munich, and we found ourselves in the giant walk-in safe that holds the Wittelsbach family’s personal collection of holy relics, almost all of which were neatly labeled. (The Wittelsbachs, you may remember, included [in chronological order] Mad King Ludwig I, Mad Max, and Mad King Ludwig II. […]