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New Film Puts Backup Singers in the Spotlight—for Once
You hear their "oohs" and "aahs" on tons of popular songs, but for most of their careers they are back from the spotlight, their voices secondary to the famous ones captivating the crowd. In the new documentary 20 Feet From Stardom,Show More Summary
Timeline: Big Ag's Campaign to Shut Up Its Critics
Mar. 1990 Kansas adopts the country's first ag gag law, making it illegal for a person to enter a private animal facility to take pictures or video if they have "intent to damage the enterprise conducted at the facility." Nov. 1990 Washington...Show More Summary
Secret Money Is Now Swaying State Judicial Elections
The "banjo ad" supporting North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby. Sam Ervin IV must have been feeling pretty good about his chances of winning a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court last fall. He had name recognition—his...Show More Summary
James Clapper: Four strikes and you’re out?
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is in the extra-hot seat at the moment, what with the shocking news of the government dragnetting our phone calls and emails and Skype sessions, etc. Calls for the President to deep-six the 72-year-old retired military officer are mounting. Show More Summary
Exclusive: Leader of Anonymous Steubenville Op on Being Raided by the FBI
In April, the FBI quietly raided the home of the hacker known as KYAnonymous in connection with his role in the Steubenville rape case. Today he spoke out for the first time about the raid, his true identity, and his motivations forShow More Summary
The Trough and Crest of Rogue Wave
Rogue Wave frontman Zach Rogue (a.k.a. Zach Schwartz) is feeling optimistic about the summer to come. Well, relatively so: "I feel like the forces of nature have tried to kill this band," he tells me, "but they haven't succeeded yet." He's referring to the seemingly neverending series of tragedies that has plagued Rogue Wave over the years. Show More Summary
Newtown's 911 Calls: Will Connecticut Block the Public From Ever Hearing Them?
Last week, the Hartford Courant reported that Connecticut's top prosecutor and aides to Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy had crafted legislation that could block public access to investigation material from the massacre at Newtown's Sandy...Show More Summary
Why Julian Assange Hates "We Steal Secrets"
Julian Assange already hates this movie. That six-word review may be all that his diehard supporters need to know about We Steal Secrets, Alex Gibney's exhaustive and exhausting new documentary on the rise and fall of WikiLeaks. Apparently...Show More Summary
Reasons to Be Hopeful a Decade After We Went Into Iraq
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. Ten years ago, my part of the world was full of valiant opposition to the new wars being launched far away and at home—and of despair. And like despairing people everywhere, whether...Show More Summary
We Tracked Down Our Biggest Troll…and Kind of Liked Him
If you've ever read anything on the internet, chances are you've encountered a troll. No, not the kind that live under bridges, or the ones with a shock of neon hair. We're talking about those annoying commenters who get their kicks by riling people up as much as possible. Show More Summary
The Next Senator From Georgia Will Probably be Nuts
The race to replace retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) is starting to take shape, and it's looking pretty one-sided. Rep. John Barrow, the Democrats' most-promising statewide candidate, has already announced he isn't running. The Republican field is growing. Show More Summary
Original Blue Ranger tells producers to 'Go go Power Rangers,' straight to hell:
Go, go Power Rangers... and take your offer with you. According to a report on Wednesday, that's the message that David Yost, who played the original Blue Ranger in the first incarnation of the series ("Mighty Morphin Power Rangers"),...Show More Summary
12 Animals We Wish We Could De-Extinct
Do you miss the mammoth? Dream of dodos? Long for Lycaena dispar dispar? After centuries of driving species after species to extinction, we're now tantalizingly close to bringing some of them back. Using advances in genetic sequencing...Show More Summary
A Brief History of Awesome Robots
In Kevin Drum's latest feature, he imagines a bleak future where robots begin taking all of our jobs. Though he predicts this will happen about three decades from now, the concept obviously isn't new. The word "robot" first appeared in a 1920s Czech play (see below), which concludes with human destruction. Show More Summary
Special effects genius Ray Harryhausen, dead at 92
Ray Harryhausen, whose stop-motion special effects could be seen as the precursor to today's special effects wizardry, has died. He died on Tuesday, in London, at the age of 92.His family announced his death on the Ray and Diana Harryhausen...Show More Summary
Lethal Battlefield Robots: Sci-Fi or The Future of War?
"We are not talking about things that will look like an army of Terminators," Steve Goose, a spokesman for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, tells me. "Stealth bombers and armored vehicles—not Terminators." Goose, the director of Human...Show More Summary
This Is Why Michael Bay Gets To Keep On Making Movies
Michael Bay is one of the most intensely reviled filmmakers of the past 30 years. "The crassest hack in the business," Rolling Stone's Peter Travers—perhaps Bay's least generous critic—said of the director after watching 2003's Bad Boys II. Show More Summary
The Chemical Industry is the Big Tobacco of the 21st Century
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. A hidden epidemic is poisoning America. The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them. We can't escape it in our cars. Show More Summary
Tig Notaro: You'll Laugh, You'll Cry
One evening last August, comedian Tig Notaro sat at home in Los Angeles, wondering what she'd tell the crowd at the Largo club. Five months earlier she'd fought off pneumonia only to be waylaid by a gut infection that siphoned 20 pounds off her scrappy frame. Show More Summary
Boston Marathon hoax videos prompt Fox to pull 'Family Guy' episode from the Web
On Tuesday, Fox pulled a "Family Guy" episode from the Internet. The episode, called “Turban Cowboy,” originally aired March 17, and was removed after edited clips that seemed to imply the show "predicted" Monday's Boston Marathon blasts were uploaded. Show More Summary
