I hope I'm wrong, but I'm sensing a trend in hard news reporting, wherein explanations of any event or process that exceed a second-grade reading level are becoming optional.

No one really speaks of this: that our visual landscape, like air and water, is perforce public property. Yet we all live blithely enough in a brand-saturated sensorium — and while we may roll our eyes at the excess of intentional messages in our visual specturm, we remain far from regarding it as what it really is: pollution. A genuine health hazard. The heartbreaker is, to some extent we have allowed this to happen.

It's gone. Bye-bye.

Yeah, well I woke up one morning and spontaneously elected to avoid being prematurely embalmed. Which meant giving up the fastidious, fetishistic, sisyphean habit of updating my obituary every few months.

In the presidential election of 2004, eleven states passed gay-marriage bans. These bans, as I understand them, preclude gay couples from asserting a number of rights (health insurance, survivor benefits etc.) afforded other couples via the legal institution of marraige. But what of other legal institutions?