Many years ago I dated a man who made lists for virtually everything. He even had the five- and ten-year plans all the business books of the era were touting. I jokingly called him List Man, and thought it was kind of quaint. Now in 2016 he’s well off and I’m not, and I’m beginning to think there was something to all his list making after all!

What we learn from Lists of Note is that people have been making lists for eons. The extremely varied lists show us that human beings have long tried to make sense of and order in the world and their lives. Most psychologists and psychiatrists agree that list making, unless it is compulsive, has a number of positive benefits.  Lists can clarify goals, organize time, tame chaos, and provide a road map for where we need to go. The act of making lists represents hope and possibility, and there is great satisfaction checking items off our lists.

The Saudi mass beheadings on January 2 proved nothing new to a world that well knows Saudi Arabia is still a tribal police state with a moral code of medieval barbarity. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-Muslim country that executes people for witchcraft, adultery, apostasy, and homosexuality (among other things). And the Saudi regime is perfectly willing to torture and kill a Shi’a-Muslim cleric for the crime of speaking truth to power, knowing that that judicial murder will inflame his followers and drive the region toward wider war. The Saudi provocation is as transparent as it is despicable, and yet the Saudis are held to no account, as usual. 

What if the very worst result of George W. Bush's war lies is that people stop taking seriously the danger of actual nuclear weapons actually falling into the hands of actual lunatics? Arguably the very worst result of Woodrow Wilson's lies about German atrocities in World War I was excessive skepticism about reports of Nazi atrocities leading up to and during World War II. The fact is that nuclear weapons are being recklessly maintained, built, developed, tested, and proliferated. The fact is that governments make mistakes, fail, collapse, and engage in evil actions.

As of this writing, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has beaten out both 1997's Titanic and 2009's Avatar to become the all-time highest-grossing film in America. It has been a massive success, both commercially and critically, thrilling old fans and creating new ones.
   It's also been accompanied by a pervasive campaign of marketing tie-ins—with everything from toys to toasters—the likes of which we haven't seen since, well, the last resurrection of the Star Wars series with The Phantom Menace. And all you have to do is look around your nearest Kroger to see a glaring problem with much of it.
   In the world of all-ages action movie marketing, no one knows what to do with Rey.