THAT STARBUCKS "I WAS A CHILD SOLDIER" GUY: At twelve, Ishmael Beah found himself fleeing rebels, wandering from village to village. At thirteen, he was a soldier in Sierra Leone, hooked on drugs and capable of things he would never have imagined. Now, rehabilitated and living in the U.S., he tells his story in A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, in an attempt to raise awareness of the child soldier phenomenon. more ›

The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby is disturbed by a disparity in the national media's treatment of Mel Gibson's liquored-up anti-semitic rantings versus Naveed Haq's shooting spree at the Jewish Federation:

Unless you've spent the past week submersed in the Mariana Trench, you know that the intoxicated driver in Incident A was Hollywood's Mel Gibson, who railed at a Los Angeles County police officer about the "[expletive] Jews" and how "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." The story was soon everywhere. In the first six days after his arrest, the media database Nexis logged 888 stories mentioning "Mel Gibson" and "Jews." And that didn't include the countless websites, talk shows, and smaller publications that also took it up. more ›

The Boston-area rap duo Big Digits will make their triumphant return to our side of the hood Saturday, nearly one year after their victorious "rap battle in Seattle" (Get it? It rhymes...) whereby their west coast rivals Cancer Rising "got served" a rap-tastic smackdown that shamed Larry Mizell into hiding. But seriously: The show Big Digits put on last May at the Lo_Fi was one of the year's best performances, particularly for the insane, indescribable dance moves of former Punk Rock Aerobics genius T.D. Sidell (see photo above), endowed with a God like kinetic energy power that would make Bruce Lee look like Richard Simmons if Lee wasn't already dead. more ›