"[C]an a mediocre and forgettable flick come to be regarded as 'excellent' if it tells the chattering class exactly what it wants to hear and shows it just what it aches to see?": A more plebeian review of the Oscar nominated movie The King's Speech. I liked Winter's Bone and True Grit much better myself.

Michigan Governor tinkers with state parole board: As did former governors Engler and Granholm for all the good it did us. The key thing here IMHO is to quit imprisoning people for victimless crimes like drug offenses. Snyder's plan to put "professionals" in charge of parole decisions sounds like he's setting up a "plausible deniability defense" in advance of any fuck-ups made in reducing Michigan's inmate population from 51,500 to 44,000 in just 18 months.

The conventional demographic wisdom is that smart, young, college-educated types head for the coastal metropolis' while the older, high school-educated, blue-collar, post-industrial folks migrate south and west: But maybe not.