W: The Incredible Shrinking Man

by Tom Engelhardt

It’s finally Wizard of Oz time in America. You know—that moment when the curtains are pulled back, the fearsome-looking wizard wreathed in all that billowing smoke turns out to be some pitiful little guy, and everybody looks around sheepishly, wondering why they acted as they did for so long.

Patriot Act II: Scarier Than the Original

by Ken Ilgunas

In October of 2001 Congress passed The Patriot Act. It received almost unanimous approval in Congress (83 percent from the House and 98 percent from the Senate) and popular support from a fervently patriotic post-9/11 America. Because it was rushed so quickly through both houses, politicians failed to realize that there wasn’t much that was patriotic about the Patriot Act. One facet of the bill, for example, allows the government to seize medical, library, school, and Internet records from anybody deemed a suspected terrorist without a judge’s approval. On Dec. 31, 2005 many sections of the Patriot Act are due to expire, but legislators are pressing to both renew and strengthen what would be the “Patriot Act II.” The Act has received criticism from conservatives, liberals and citizens everywhere, but it has also proved to be a potent weapon in our nation’s arsenal for the war on terror. Should we be willing to give up some of our civil liberties for reasons of national security, or should we judge the Patriot Act unconstitutional and rid it from our law books?

Here Comes the Sun: Pontiac Solstice

by Jim Corbran

This is one of those cars which almost makes you wish you lived in a more roadster-friendly climate; like, oh, say a post-Schwarzenegger California. The evening I got the call from Adam Levy over at Don Davis Pontiac inviting me over for a test drive of their new two-seater, it was not what you’d call top-down weather. In fact, it was downright chilly. But as Mark Davis and I got ready to climb in for a drive, we both considered dropping the top anyway, because with a car like this it just seemed like the thing to do. Yes, we considered it. For about a nanosecond. Then we came to our senses and took off into the night with the top where it should be on a November evening in WNY: up.

Breaking Into the Mainstream: Sarah Campbell

by Michael J. Sherry

Believe it or not, there is more on the radio these days than free gas giveaways and Kelly Clarkson. Just Buffalo Literary Center, striving to provide writing programs for the eight counties of Western New York and to create awareness about local and visiting authors, recently plunged its literary fingers into the radio pie with “Spoken Arts”, hosted by Sarah Campbell on WBFO 88.7 FM.

Intepreting Nature

by Kevin Thurston

“At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multicolored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced. All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an imaginary planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain the world to me with an image. I realize then you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know.”

A Great New Look: Vue

by Arthur Page

One of the Buffalo area’s greatest assets has nothing to do with a body of water, professional sports teams, great art galleries or world-class music. It’s not limited to a specific neighborhood, nor is access limited by financial barriers.

Lori Desormeaux

by Lauren N. Maynard

Why you should know who she is: The versatile and creative Lori Desormeaux has been a painter and interior designer for 15 years (not decorator—she doesn’t do pillows). Her beautiful and intricate design projects and commissioned artwork can be found on the walls of residential homes, and in commercial and retail spaces throughout the Buffalo area. She bases her business, Lori Desormeaux Decorative Arts, out of her home studio in a Black Rock house that she is carefully renovating from top to bottom, but she has also worked with clients in Florida and New York City. In 2004, her work was featured on the cover of Builder/Architect magazine, a career highlight. Her “bread and butter” is fine artistic wall finishes, like painted marbleizing and textural effects on plaster, but by far her favorite and most stunning creations are her large-scale landscape murals and frescoes as well as glass and tile mosaics. Each project is painstakingly done by hand; she mixes all of her colors and cuts her own glass, using local suppliers whenever possible. Her work can be seen online at www.loridesormeaux.com.

■ Among the “10 Worst Jobs in Science” in Popular Science’s annual November listing: Harvard researchers in Borneo who catch orangutan urine (in plastic sheets, the way firefighters catch jumpers) for studying reproduction-hormone levels; gear-packing monitors who run toward (not away from) the gases and molten rock of erupting volcanoes (dozens have been killed or wounded); U.S. Geological Survey workers at two picturesque California lakes monitoring “extremophile” microbes that thrive in the most putrid environments (work that one says resembles being surrounded by 100 “extremely flatulent people”); and “human lab rats” such as students employed in an industry-funded University of California at San Diego study for $15 an hour to have pesticides sprayed into their eyes.

by Rob Brezsny

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Wave farewell to your old self, Sagittarius. Maybe blow a few kisses as well. But don’t linger too long. Refuse to get bogged down in ambiguous rituals filled with interminable goodbyes and meticulous inventories of the past. It’s time to go! Off with you! You’ve got urgent appointments with the unsettling but fascinating future, and it’s best to part ways with habits that have dulled your initiative and comforts that have numbed your courage. You’re ready for more change than you think you’re capable of.