Don't let your children grow up to be theatre people.

This video from the Guardian attributes Julian Assange's isolated and nomadic personality to the fact that his parents ran a touring puppet theatre. Seriously.

Scientists betting on reality. No, actually betting real money on it.

If I was writing a screenplay for the Sloan Screenplay Competition sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the Public Understanding of Science (which I would be if I was a student in the dramatic writing program, and hoping to win the $20,000 prize which goes to a CMU student each year)... I might well discover a plot in this story from the Economist in which bookies actually make book on scientific discoveries and disasters. Think you know many polar bears will die this year? It's one way to make money from climate change. There's a range of bets on what the Large Hadron Collider will detect. And then there's the story that begins this way:

The story was different, though, for the fifth wager—that gravitational waves would be detected. News that the bookmaker was offering 500/1 against this happening spread rapidly among the small group of physicists and astronomers searching for such waves.

New experiences (continued)

Being identified in an online journal of Queens as one of "nine different writers from Iceland and Lebanon."

Sometimes theatre is a strange place, full of fear.

This news item linked below leaves me almost speechless. Except to say this: every play Deb Margolin writes is important, and I look forward to this play finding a home. Or many homes.

Washington Post: Theater J pulls Madoff play after objections from activist Elie Wiesel