The BobboSphere: Don't believe everything you think.

Tracy Turnblad and the gang are back in this latest version of the John Waters classic about desegregation in Baltimore, Maryland during the early 1960's. Hairspray was originally a 1980's film starring Ricki Lake as Tracy Turnblad and then turned into a hit Broadway musical. The 2007 film is based more on the musical than the John Waters original film. Waters does make a brief cameo in the new movie as a flasher pervert. Anyone who has seen his Pink Flamingos will appreciate the irony.

The story of Hairspray was based on the real life civil rights protests at Baltimore's Gwynn Oak Amusement Park and at the Buddy Dean Show, a dance program modeled after Dick Clark's more famous American Bandstand.

Last fall two environmentalists did a barnstorming tour together touting the advantages of solar and wind to politicians in three states. Nothing unusual about that except that one of them was the president of the United Steel Workers union and the other was the president of the Sierra Club.

A hardhat and backpacker together? Yep, economic crisis.....meet the environmental crisis.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about “knowledge workers” and the “New Economy”. When I was a student at the University of Maryland, I trained to be a high school teacher. I ended up doing that along with a variety of other jobs. Now I that I am coding websites for a living, I guess I'm one of those knowledge workers, or more accurately, a member of the digital proletariat.  Sure I write labor cartoons for my partner Estelle to draw, but you really didn't think that was my day job did you?

According to the LA Times quoting the usual unnamed  off-the-record official,  the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from--- Saudi Arabia, a major oil producer. Let's see, 15 of the 19 September 11th attackers came from Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Ladin is a Saudi, the Bush family and their acolytes are close allies of the Saudis....oops, better stop there.