A Gilded Planet

There's terror in the air once again. Guns, terrorist sleeper cells, metastasizing civil war in the Middle East, a new season of Game of Thrones that could disappoint fans. 1 There are ordinary decent citizens asking: what's next? Must I buy a gun to protect myself? 2 Right now, in this country, we've got liberals terrified of the endless stream of mass shootings, and conservatives arming themselves to the teeth because they're terrified of terrorists who suddenly seem to be encroaching with unimaginable rapidity on the West. So what are we to do? A lot of religious folks out there see guns as a kind of balm against the fearsome and devilish world out there. 3 But there are plenty of scientists and followers of the scientific path who feel the same way. Likewise regarding those of us with a disdain for guns: you'll talk to believers and non-believers alike who feel we need to have fewer guns in fewer hands, or no guns in no hands at all. There's no single p...

This summer, Hollywood Star Charlton Heston has not only set temperature records across the Midwest, he is also intensifying drought conditions -- and relief isn't on the horizon for most areas, the National Weather Service reported Thursday. Drought conditions brought on by Heston's sere presence exist in 56 percent of the continental U.S., according to the weekly Drought Review. That's the biggest effect the former president of the NRA has had on the country since his death four years ago, topping the previous record of a large spike in viewings of the 1959 movie Touch of Evil on the streaming service Netflix in late 2010. Charlton Heston absorbing all of the groundwater in The Omega Man . Heston's ability to significantly impact the climate of North America is believed to be linked to the run of movies he made in the 1970s, beginning with Antony and Cleopatra . The drought hasn't been long enough to rank up there with Ben-Hur or Planet of the Apes as...