Movie Buzz Brace yourselves: Hasbro is taking over Hollywood. If you loved the idea of movies based on popular action figures, you will doubtless be THRILLED to discover that several beloved board games are set to become blockbuster films in the near future. Yay?
http://i.gizmodo.com/5164841/robot-programmed-to-love-tra...
Robot programmed to love traps woman in lab and … hugs her repeatedly. Oh the humanity!
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2009/01/2009_will_be_a_y...
The link everyone seems to be passing around today: Bruce Sterling says forget the ox, this is the year of the Panic. The perfect late-Friday read! Now you have a bonus though entirely unnecessary excuse to drink the weekend away.
Culture Buzz Broadway musicals are dropping like flies due to tough economic times. Godspell, Brigadoon, and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf have been scrapped before opening, and others are threatening the same. We say, what gives? Why is it that when pennies must be pinched, tap shoes and glitter are always the first things to go? Sigh.
Science Buzz A major volcanic eruption in Chile, a horrifying cyclone in Myanmar, a series of global earthquakes, most recently in Japan: Have the end times arrived? The Myanmar death toll keeps climbing, and the area around the Chaiten volcano has been evacuated. Relief organizations are doing their best to help out.