• The Black Eyed Peas chain your brain to their basement dungeon of damned professional affability.  

Stockholm syndrome refers to the condition in which hostages develop positive feelings for their captors, but there’s also a corollary in pop music. It happens when a group’s music — an album that sells 11 million copies, and yields five Top 10 singles, say — hijacks your aural space so aggressively that the listener is pummeled into acquiescence... Boston Globe

• Two questions: Why are so many bands performing single-album reunion tours lately? And why am I not ashsamed to admit I liked this Dashboard Confessional record? 

• What are you supposed to be drinking next? How about an Indonesian "rum"? 

Like anything else that people get really, really into - Internet porn, for example - once you've started chasing the infinite possibilities inherent in mixing cocktails down the boozy rabbit hole, you need to work harder to make things interesting. That's why desensitized tipplers turn to increasingly exotic cocktail ingredients and esoteric recipes to get that dopamine going. So while we covered the trend of tiki cocktails a while back in this magazine, the idea of plain old rum drinks just doesn't get our rocks off anymore. Yawn. What else you got? Stuff 

Went out to your old hometown bar on Thanksgiving eve? Got into a fist fight with your high school best friend and then threw up on your ex while you two were trying to have a quickie in the alley behind the pub? Luke O'Neil tried to save you

So you’d do an awkward stop-and-chat, filling each other in on the past five or ten years of shared mediocrity, then you’d be like, “Nice to see you, I gotta run,” and you’d speed out of there on your roller blades, because everyone rollerbladed everywhere back then, if I’m remembering it correctly..... Street Carnage

"I tried to prevent (being touched) with my hands but Mrs. Michelle held her hands too far toward me (so) we touched," Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring on Twitter. 

While Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, the vast majority practice a moderate form of the faith. But Sembiring has flaunted his conservatism and says he avoids contact with women who are not related to him...

Sembiring has often tweeted controversial comments, including blaming natural disasters on a lack of morality and joking about AIDS. Associated Press

By custom Tigers cheerleaders support any player at the foul line by shouting his name. In the first half Bolton was fouled twice. H.S. had been cheering as usual, but each time Bolton went to the line, in a peaceful protest, she folded her arms, stepped back and remained silent while her squad cheered, "Go, Rakheem!" After the halftime buzzer, H.S. was scolded "in front of God and everybody," says her father. H.S. had not "abided by the Cheerleader Constitution," according to Hunt. The code requires cheerleaders to shout equally for all. Rather than cheer for Bolton, she chose to go home.

Though H.S. was later permitted to rejoin the cheerleading squad if she would follow its rules, the family filed a civil suit against the school district, and on Sept. 16 the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that H.S.'s silent protest was not protected speech under the First Amendment. However, the court wrangling distracts from the bottom line: A school is supposed to be an emotional safe haven for all students, and educators should help, not harass, students in vulnerable positions. Why force H.S. to do something that made her uncomfortable? Why not err on the side of compassion? "For all anyone knew," Hunt says of the protest, "it was a girl mad at a boy." By this rationale a rape charge is no different from a text-message breakup.