Open Mic

Sonic Boom: the explo­sion at the fer­til­izer plant in West, Texas.

The week started off with a dis­as­ter in Boston, as some­one exploded a pair of bombs at the fin­ish line of the Boston Marathon. Wednes­day night, there was a dis­as­ter in Texas as a fer­til­izer plant exploded, killing at least fif­teen peo­ple. The Sen­ate had its own dis­as­ter, as a minor­ity of Sen­a­tors fil­i­bus­tered a bill with pro­vi­sions sup­ported by nine out of ten Amer­i­cans. Harry Reid promised to come back to it — the fight is not over. Dis­as­ters were averted when two let­ters con­tain­ing the deadly poi­son ricin were dis­cov­ered, one addressed to a Sen­a­tor, he other to the Pres­i­dent. A sus­pect is in cus­tody. Another sus­pect is in cus­tody — a mar­ried cou­ple, actu­ally — in a dis­as­ter that hap­pened, the mur­der of a pair of Texas pros­e­cu­tors (and the wife of one of them). The dis­as­ter that was America’s response to the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks had more light shed upon it, as a bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion con­cluded that the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion tor­tured many of the peo­ple it ille­gally detained. In what might be an inter­est­ing twist on the ori­gin of the word “dis­as­ter” — a “bad star” — NASA announced dis­cov­ery of two or three plan­ets that might har­bor life, thus per­haps orbit­ing good stars.

But we don’t have to talk about dis­as­ters. It’s Fri­day, and that means the floor is yours. What do you want to discuss?

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.

Gene Siskel (left) and Roger Ebert, along with their famous thumbs.

Pres­i­dent Obama went on tour this week to sell his pro­posal for increased firearm reg­u­la­tions. Recent job growth has report­edly been faster in large com­pa­nies than in small ones, a change from the his­tor­i­cal norm. North Korea con­tin­ued its saber-​​rattling this week. We lost a leg­end At the Movies; crit­ics gave it two thumbs down. And speak­ing of such dark mat­ters, a par­ti­cle hunter attached to the Inter­na­tional Space Sta­tion may have found the build­ing blocks of dark mat­ter.

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.